As a result of my CRI Genetics results, I have come to understand why I have never been a Nationalist or a White Supremacist.  (The phrases “America First,” “My Country Right Or Wrong!”, and “White is Right” turn my stomach!)

 

That’s because up until 1921, when Mom was born, none of my matrilinear family originated here. And my Dad’s family came relatively recently to North America, too, surely no earlier than the 1800’s, from Europe.

 

WHO AM I? WHO ARE YOU?

 

I am Peruvian, Colombian, Mexican and Puerto Rican (my bloodline is found in those places predating me by 500+ years). It has only been during recent times that my ancestors lived in and emigrated from Europe, although I have bloodlines in the British Isles (four generations and more back), India (five generations and more back),  Italy (7 generations and more back) and South and East Asia, specifically India, Punjabi, Sri Lankan Tamil and Bengali, Vietnam, Japan, and China including  North and South Han (13 generations back), my South American roots go back 15 and 27 generations, while my Italian roots go back 32 generations.

 

And of course, before that, my bloodline was in Esan, Nigeria, Black Africa hundreds if not thousands of years before it was colonized, terrorized and enslaved by White Supremacist Europeans!

 

So, maybe that’s why wars — declared and undeclared — have always bothered me and why I abhor racism to the very core of my being.  I am the product of many nationalities and  “races.”  The very fact that we can interbreed and have fertile offspring proves that we are the same species no matter where we hail from, and that makes us relatives.

 

NONE DARE CALL IT CIVILIZATION

 

We’ve been MASTER-FULLY AND GRIEVOUSLY misled when teachers defined our species as “civilized.”  As long as we consider anyone else a “them” and not a part of “ourselves”, we are not civilized, we are indoctrinated.

 

And what allows wars to happen — declared and undeclared — is when we stand by and allow it to happen.  “All it takes for evil to spread is for good people to do nothing.”  Our cultures do their best to make us wary of other cultures and peoples. They want us to feel separate, unaligned and afraid of other folks based on race, gender, benign lifetyle, and/or  culture.

 

RELIGION

 

And religions have been at the forefront of the same kind of war-profiteering. Christians are indoctrinated to hate/fear/malign Muslims, Jews, LGBTQIA+ folks, even other Christian denominations!  The Holy Bible has been used to marginalize and enslave women and people of color by White Supremacists, despite the fact that not  a single person in it was white, including Jesus.

 

REVISIT WHAT YOU’VE BEEN TAUGHT

 

It behooves each of us to read history not from the so-called victor’s perspective but from the so-called defeated side of the equation.  Start with A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by the late Howard Zinn and then read THE 1619 PROJECT. If history doesn’t hurt when you read it, you aren’t reading history, you’re reading propaganda written by conquerors whose rationales for their actions “explain” the inevitability of their “God-given” success as plunderers and rapists.

 

And understand this. I realize that my ancestors were very likely both enslaved and enslavers, both colonizers and conquered. I especially know that now, as a result of my DNA results. You have the same kind of background, each and every one of you.

 

I think the “lesson” here is that we are not yet a CIVILIZATION at all.  Far too many of us — especially those in power — remain warring tribes, convinced we’re better than our “enemies” who are actually a part of our own bloodlines.  We’re warring with ourselves to become better and better at realizing our common humanity and needs.

 

I think the Dalai Lama, Jesus, Buddha, Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmund Tutu, Robert F Kennedy, Maya Angelou, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall and others like them have it right.  Only when we foster lovingkindness to all living beings (not just humans but other animals  and Earth itself) will we ever reach the civilization that will live long and prosper.  Anything less will deliver more of what we already have and, as most of us know, what we have isn’t working.

 

There is one phrase I heartily endorse, but for all the world: United We Stand, Divided We Fall.

 

It isn’t just enough to “live and let live.”  What’s required is to love and respect our differences while keeping firmly in mind that, despite them, we share bloodlines and our mission in life is to realize that and treat each other the way we want to be treated… as equal sojourners, period. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less!