“One can be ignorant without being prejudiced. However, one cannot be prejudiced without being ignorant.”
– Modern Romanticism
To be anti-racist would have to mean to be anti-ignorance. However, how can one be anti of an absence, pertaining to ignorance, without broadening the void?
Instead, to make the error of relating prejudice to hatred, would have to mean to be anti-knowledge, if one is anti-racist by way of this hate. It is not hatred that fuels prejudice, though it is instead an absence of knowledge to another individual. In knowing the individual, one knows the culture, because one has penetrated past mere skin color.
A fascinating aspect of individuals comprehending each other is to open one’s doors to who one knows. Though, among immigration, to open doors to who one doesn’t know well, may be to invite danger. One raises walls against danger, inevitably so. Though, to comprehend the culture is to be past skin color. That is the knowledge, that against ignorance, is the only true way to be anti-racist.
One cannot be anti-racist, and at the same time, be anti-hatred. Genuine hate comes as an experience of betrayal, and through this, there was knowledge. There was, at one time, a connection between individuals. When betrayal struck, hatred formed when love, itself, became twisted and corrupt. Love is pure. To then become hatred, means for love to have been touched by it. Though, it is by the aspect of knowledge that two individuals once identified with each other. To be anti-racist would mean to be anti-ignorance, not anti-hatred. If one is anti-hatred, then one is for the notion that toxic people or betrayers should still be around those they betrayed.
If we are to be anti-hatred, as we wish to be anti-racist, are we next going to side with the idea that perhaps a woman should invite her narcissistic ex-husband back into her life out of blind trust?
To trust, is to know. Then, to have that knowledge, means to have wisdom. One has learned, from their past errors through experience of betrayal. More than all else, one has learned how to forgive. Love does not re-enter back into a modern realm, without learning how to forgive.
We are beautiful when we are fragile, when we are open. However, we cannot be open to evident danger. It is the danger that we know it to be, not among the individual, though typically among the collection. Though, we cannot say that the collective represents the individual, when it is through the knowledge of a one that we see a different perspective. Separated from the collective, and then a person is in awareness to an individual, not the group.
Individualism is to knowledge, as ignorance and fear is to the collective. Love has its realm within forgiveness, though must be to the experience of betrayal for it to be appropriate. Individualism should praise the idea of forgiveness, as the collective should reject the afflictions of fear and ignorance in place of knowledge. It is then that individualism rules, by this comparison.
To be truly anti-racist, among all these comparisons, would instead refer to being anti-fear and ignorance. To be anti either of those things, would only be needful, when we are for the idea of individual comprehending individual. To comprehend the individual, is in full relation to what is deeper than what represents the collective, being the external details such as skin color and race.
As it is, can one look upon the race to be like the cover to a book? That, if the book is never delved into, its details would remain in ignorance to the potential reader? If race is comparable to the book cover, then why would it be the discussion of any academic or similar setting? Is not the academic, or the craver of knowledge, more interested in the book’s details, over the cover?