Race, Racism, and the Public Enemy Within

Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it. (Attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

They watched him closely and sent agents pretending to be righteous who were to trap him in speech, in order to hand him over to the authority and power of the governor. (Luke 20:20)

“Why that dirty, no-good, yellow-bellied stool. I’m going to give it to him right in the head the next time I see him,”  James Cagney said in the 1931 classic The Public Enemy. Cagney, as Tom Powers, is not able to see the good in anyone, even the own members of his family, and least of all himself. He sinks deeper and deeper into his distorted world of self-hate and thuggish crime, pushing everyone away, until his own evil consumes him. In trying to blame everyone else for his troubles, he doesn’t realize until he is on his death bed that he is his own public enemy.

Finding Racism in Band Aids

This movie came to mind after watching a TikTok video posted by a public school teacher. In it, she held up a small, tan-colored bandage, evidently provided by the school. She claimed that even though the Band Aid was labeled “flesh” color, it was only similar to the color of the flesh of her white students. She then further explained that she chose to go out and purchase, at great expense, additional bandages which were darker in color, so that she could give her brown students their own bandages. This, she submitted, was just one more example of the intrinsic evils of white privilege and supremacy of which we all must be aware. She clearly felt pleased to share her victory in rooting out racism.

In order to get to this virtuous result, she had, first and foremost, to make the assumption that Band Aids were created specifically for white people. Yet, according to the company website, the Johnson & Johnson Band Aid was first created in 1920 by using white surgical adhesive tape and cotton balls. The adhesive tape and cotton were always bleached for purposes of sterility. When the Band Aid was finally mass produced, it appeared in a light tan color so that it would not stand out so much on a person’s skin as the white surgical tape.

Additionally, in 2005, Johnson & Johnson produced a line of Band Aids in various shades of dark brown, but dropped the line due to very poor sales. (I looked at my own package of Band Aids, and nowhere did it indicate that it was “flesh” color.) Finally, the #1 sellers on Amazon of bandages are those imprinted with cartoon characters. Who wouldn’t want a Band Aid decorated with Thomas the Train or Paw Patrol?

The False Idea of Race

This teacher chose to look at something as insignificant as a Band Aid in order to create—and, in her mind, virtuously expose—a racist conspiracy. Ironically, the racism which certain people want to see in everyone else is something which they must first instigate and cultivate within themselves, for the concept of “race” is not a scientific fact such as the rising of the sun, nor is it a naturally occurring attribute among humans such as eye color. Instead, it can be viewed, as stated in a recent paper published by the National Institute of Health, as “the history of a false idea.”

We only need to look at that history to see that race itself is an artificial construct. It is not based upon any scientific truth, but rather upon the need to justify domination by one group over another. The invention of race by European naturalists and anthropologists was first marked by Carl Linnaeus’s Systema naturae in 1735, and utilized through the centuries by various groups, governments, and pseudo-scientific geneticists from the U.S. Census Department to the Third Reich and Margaret Sanger to justify their agenda.

That there is no such thing as “races” of people has also been widely evidenced among us
common folk through the popular use of ancestry tests. There we look at our results and see only mixtures of nationalities, tribes, or clans. Thus, in order to see “white privilege” or “racism” in others, one must be willing and eager to categorize people by this insidious and totally meaningless code of “white,” “brown,” and “black” with ludicrous, logic-twisting results.

The Real Public Enemy

Is my fair-skinned, freckle-faced student who has an African-American father and a mother of Irish descent considered “brown”? Is another, darker-skinned child whose mother came from India and father is Italian-American considered “white”?  For what possible purpose are these inane categories utilized? The use of “race” is used today just as it was decades ago: to separate and create a sense of superiority among those who define “race.”  You are either in the cool club, or you are not.

Nothing is more contrary to truth, reason, or the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The great Public Enemy is not “racism.” Rather, it is the eagerness to think the worst of every person and action. It is the reluctance to look for logical answers which would be contrary to one’s world view. It is the desire to find some flaw in another which can be used to make the finder feel superior to the other. “Race” and “racism” are merely the tools being used.

Only the Sons and Daughters of God

What can we Catholics do? In the words of Morgan Freeman, “Stop talking about it.” Refuse to see and talk about the supposed “race” of another. Not only does it denigrate the wonderful creations which each of us are, it is a terribly false categorization of human potential. Instead, just as Jesus did, let us lovingly view and celebrate each person as a unique and beautiful creation of God, a brother and sister in Christ. There are no black or white. There are only the sons and daughters of God whose goodness and light we should be seeking and celebrating.

As the brilliant James Cagney, actor, dancer, painter, and devout Catholic poet once wrote, we should believe that “all space is filled with wondrous things,” and never fear those who laugh at us for

Presuming to hold that The Christ is living

And all that’s good is of God’s own giving.

Keep the faith.