A Lighter, or Darker, Shade of Pale

My wife is a person from tropical climes. She is small, brown, immensely capable and remarkably intelligent. BOM (Beloved Of Mine) is also the rock to which I have anchored my life.

If you are a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Panther Movement or any other group that believes in the ascendancy of one group, or race, over all others then you should probably stop reading about now.

From time immemorial there have been attempts to wipe out other races or groups. The Romans tried it although they were fairly catholic in their victims often using them in their own armies or as slaves.

In more recent times the Boer in South Africa was the target of considerable vituperation by the British and then, of course, Hitler rose to power.

The Nazi regime attempted to produce a Master Race by eliminating those who were incompatible with their ideals of being tall, blonde and blue-eyed. Of course, the fact that none of the Nazi heirarchy failed to meet these standards was conveniently overlooked in their zeal to establish an Aryan superpower in a Reich that would last for a thousand years.

The National Socialist government under Herr Hitler—der Fuehrer, attempted to eradicate the unwanted portions of their population by shooting, hanging and, of course, the gas chambers. Their victims were blacks, petty criminals, homosexuals, weak minded (behinderte), political subversives, Roman Catholics and, as we know, Jews.

Now we are only required to remember and sympathise with one part of this huge group but we should remember that the holocaust affected many more people.

Another method employed to terminate the unwanted was to give them their freedom providing that they enlisted in the penal regiments and go to Russia to die. The penal regiment had, as some sort of irony, the number 999.

This is not without precedent. The French had their own version called ‘La Légion Étrangère’ that we know of as ‘The French Foreign Legion’. Tough outfit that saw the rise of the Vietnam War and then hightailed it when the US, NZ and Australian Forces moved in.

The Nazis weren’t the only ones to wipe out lots of people. Uncle Josef Stalin had bloody hands. His purges, as they were so quaintly described, were not racist in nature since Russia is comprised of so many races but rather against people he didn’t like or didn’t like him, people he regarded as treacherous and people he saw as a threat to his seat of power.

Did it end there?

No.

The Korean War was a war of ideologies. The North embraced Communism as they still do in some sort of brainwashed stupor and the south wanted the perceived freedom of capitalism.

Africa is full of tribalism. Not just racist but small groups versus other small groups. Cutting of the hands or arms of opponents to render them less effective in war and consume the opposing sides resources in terms of medical aid was a popular tactic in the tribal wars of West Africa.

Then there are the Tutsis and Hutus. The original idea was that the Tutsi were the wealthy ones and the Hutu were poorer and less deserving.

Actually, it seems that the Tutsi are from a Watusi base and the Hutu come from a migrational route of Bantu people but that now starts to become more complex.

It was sufficient that the wars, amounting to genocide, were based on tribal and economic differences.

This is only a short step away from the idea of slavery. Hundreds of years of stealing people from other tribes and then selling them to Arab traders on the coast for onward purchase and transportation to the New World and the Middle East still causes festering hereditary memories.

South Africa is a marked example of racial tension as is Zimbabwe. Both are well documented.

The Israelis, for all their posturing, are hell bent on wiping out Arabs. The Palestinians are only the thin end of the wedge; the Iranians are surely next in the line of fire.

Then there are the race riots in America. Not so long ago. These riots echo down the years into the present day where they are frequently brought up and bandied around. We quite often, now, see postings and ‘Blogs’ from white people saying that Blacks are racist because they have their own TV network, colleges and magazines—even films have been described as ‘Black’. Hispanics are following. The argument is that if white people had the same facility it would be regarded as racist. Make your own mind up.

It is not so long ago that the Americans were trying to wipe out the 'savages' and the Australians were moving the aborigines around to 'civilise' them, of course the idea of interbreeding was always permissible providing it was a white male with a black woman from which the offspring were called 'Creamies'.

I’m going to tell you a story.

Many years ago, almost fifty in fact, I was posted to Singapore where we had a maid called Sadia.

She was not actually called Sadia but there was a famous (in that region) actress called Sadia at that time that all the girls wished to be named after.

Sadia was young and brainy. Her command of English, when she chose it to be, was exemplary.

It was our occasional custom to sit together when I returned from a night shift on the Squadron and put the World right over coffee.

But, first, there is a need for explanation.

When I was young, around six years old, my Uncle brought a West Indian home to share the evening meal.

My home then was in the wilds so I had never seen anyone darker than off-white before. This was something of a shock. We had no television, rarely had newspapers and ‘National Geographic’ was lurking somewhere in my future.

After our guest had gone I asked my Uncle who the fellow was.

“That’s George,” he told me.

“Who is he?” I repeated.

“He is one of my colleagues from the office,” Uncle patiently replied.

“But who is he?” I was persistent.

At last my Uncle understood, “He is one of our coloured brethren,” he explained.

This is, probably, the worst possible explanation to a person such as I. Why? I have monochromatic vision. Everything ‘out there’ is black, white and various shades of grey.

Over the years I learnt that there were Red Indians, Brown Indians, Black Africans and that the Chinese and Japanese were yellow.

Back to Sadia.

One morning I asked her what colour she was, expecting her to say ‘blue’ or ‘green’. She frowned at me and asked how this question came about and so the explanation was given.

She chuckled and told me that the girl next door, a Tamil lady, is called ‘black’ but we could see the difference between her hair and her forehead. Then she said that people would call me ‘white’ but she could see where my shirt ended and my hand began.

We are both, the Tamil lady and I, Sadia insisted, the same colour but that she is a darker shade to my very pale shade. She then described herself, stroking her arm, as perfect.

Hard to argue that.

So the scales came off my eyes and a new era of non-understanding came to pass.

Why was there ‘apartheid’ in South Africa? Why the race riots in Alabama. So people were not divided into different species (I had never thought about interbreeding!) but were all one.

I had to wait until In was twenty three years old to discover this but discover it I did courtesy of a wise young head.

Some people never get it. Some people resist to the bitter end.

OK, Aryan Brotherhood, you may continue reading now.

Both of these films are worth watching: