Rafe wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 4:59 pm
flechero wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:41 pm
What's tragic is that everyone- black, white and other was outraged at Floyd's murder... we all called it murder from the start. It's being used to fuel racism where there was not racism. Now it's "us against them" and whites this and whites that.
I saw several interviews- sadly, no real sorrow for Floyd, just a bunch of racist rhetoric.
Where is the outrage for the loss of life in chicago last weekend or at any of the looting and riots? Making all white people the enemy is only going to make it WORSE. It's like the end goal is a race war or something. Disgusting.
The service has wrapped and televised coverage continues with the horse-drawn hearse procession to the cemetery; 4 hours 45 minutes of television coverage so far.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is one of the most racist individuals I know. And yes, absolutely, this has been made into nothing but racist rhetoric.
Dear Rev. Sharpton, let's please look at the definition of racism: "a belief that race is a primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent uniqueness, separation, or specialness among human beings."
Rev. Sharpton, what you constantly preach is that African Americans are somehow innately different, unique, or special from other people. You do not preach or espouse equality; you preach difference, divisiveness, and defiance.
The inconvenient truth is that, biologically, there is absolutely no such thing as "race" among human beings. None. In the taxonomy of science, there would have have to be subspecies of Homo Sapiens Sapiens before there could be a different races. There are not. We are all of one and the same species.
In fact, Rev. Sharpton, of the 3.2
billion DNA markers in each of our genomes, all human beings who have ever lived are approximately 99.7% identical. We're not only more alike than different, but we are all virtually identical. Of the genetic markers that help define our differences at global population levels--Africa, West Eurasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, Northeast Asia, and Americas; what you might point to as the true, genetic measure of diversity--population geneticists estimate there are approximately 4 or 5 million markers, called single nucleotide polymorphisms, that can potentially differentiate one ancestral population from another. That's 0.156% of our DNA.
We, none of us, are different, unique, or special. We are human.
All of us came out of Africa. All of us. Whether you subscribe to scripture or evolution, we all had a common origin. And we were all dark-skinned. Rev. Sharpton, do you know why my skin is pale and yours is dark? Vitamin D. That's the only reason. Vitamin D. Some of the humans who left Africa moved north into Eurasia. The ice age came, the Last Glacial Maximum, and it began to greatly reduce the sunlight reaching the northern latitudes. Our bodies synthesize vitamin D from sunlight, and without sufficient vitamin D humans are at far greater risk of dying from multiple problems, including heart failure, and insufficiencies impact fertility and successful births. Light colored skin absorbs sunlight at far greater levels than does dark skin. What was a distinct advantage in sub-Saharan Africa could have been a death knell in sunless northern Europe and Asia many millennia ago. The bodies of my ancestors had to adapt to survive, and they did so by losing skin pigmentation. White people didn't gain something special, something genetically unique. We're pale because we lost something. We needed vitamin D, so our bodies lost the pigmentation we had originally had before emigrating from Africa.
From January 1, 2017, through March 31, 2020, police in the United States killed over 24% more white people than Black. You, Rev. Sharpton, are not different, unique, or special. Neither am I, and neither was George Floyd.
This should be a human issue, a humanitarian issue. Not a Black vs. white issue. Please, Rev. Sharpton, you should be preaching equality and God's love for all mankind. Please, please entreaty God in prayer and listen to Him openly, and then decide if you should continue your racist rhetoric, to continue to fulminate an illogical, deep division among what you call "races." I pray that if you truly open your heart to God that His love and grace will inform you, and you will finally realize the error in your ways. That we must embrace all men as brothers. All men. Not just those whose skin pigmentation looks a bit more like our own. Otherwise the only race, the human race, is doomed.