Duality: revisited (another free write)

Something has been on my mind lately, and a number of things have led me to want to write about it:  A shirt with a picture of W.E.B. DuBois with his concept of duality printed on it, worn by my mentoring Team leader and a facilitated discussion I helped lead this week, on LGBTQIA (that's a lot of letters!) orientation with some Edward Jones associates, students and their teachers.  I just thought about my idea about humans all being on one spectrum of the same "being".  So, just like you have really pale "white people" or really dark "black people" and all of the colors in between, we can have brains that are wired to think like the epitome of the alpha male, or the most feminine woman you can be... and everything in between.  Now that's not to say that the brain's development in any given body HAS to be in congruence with the outward appearance of that body (male/female/all other body forms).  This, ladies and gentlemen, is what Science is slowly telling us happens in gay or lesbian people as well as transgendered, bisexual or asexual people.  The main factor here is that we ALL want to be respected for who we are, the decisions we make.  These are different from and somewhat tied to our sexual preference, but they help define us way more than any one characteristic does.

That brings me to the subject of what William Edward Burghard DuBois calls: duality.  This is the idea that a black person sees himself in two ways.  He is black first (which was always clearly made known at the time) and an American at the same time.  DuBois said that these two ideas war against each other inside a person's body and that the only thing that keeps it from being "torn asunder" is the strength of the black skin in which these ideas are encased.  I say the true struggle was between self-identity and perceived identity.

I submit that these things are more basic, more elemental than that.  However, in the environment of the late 1800's and early 1900's,  it would have been hard to identify as anything but black, inferior, etc.  Now I see it as first being human, and second being a citizen.  Going forward I will use the word state, and by state I mean any part of the established capitalistic political structure that abounds around the world.  

A human is born.  A citizen is verified.  A person has a family role and is given a name.  A citizen has a economical role (usually predetermined) and receives an identification number.  That's just a couple of things, but you get the point.  When slaves were brought here, everything about their culture as humans was destroyed by chance and by design.  With that start, there is bound to be a mountain of baggage.  I contest that this is true with any culture though.  Recently, I read about some Bosnians that were relocated during the time that Russia was staging its bid in the Cold War after Viet Nam.  They couldn't speak the language and were forced to work for free or minimal wages.  Of course these people weren't traded.  The ancient Hebrews were though, and that was done by the Egyptians (people of Kemet, Egyptian is actually kind of a derogatory term invented by Greeks) and Nubians, trading to the Greeks and eventually Romans.  Can you imagine a time when blonde-haired, blue-eyed people were considered the scourge of the Earth, the red headed step children of globals society (not Jews, caucasians)? Well this was it.  

So my point is that this war, this duality comes from two warring ideas of a different kind.  You are a human first, and a citizen second.  When the state asks of you as a citizen, your human traits are supposed to go on the back burner (ex: soldiers at war).  For former slaves, the state that abuses them was asking them for yet more.  They were to serve the state in other capacities, but still kept in the slave's place mentally.

This same thing can happen to any group of people, it matters not the "race", "gender" or whatever other category we choose to invent.  So then, we must be respectful of all sorts of people, because their ancestral history probably looks a lot more like yours than you realize.  The state is the true enemy of the people, not your neighbor.  Remember, people lived for 100's of thousands of years (if not millions) without militaries and state governments, and they produced us!  So they must have been doing something right. But I digress...

Have a good weekend.

Peace