The Colour Of Life.

"Quality album, quality actor"

According to accepted human wisdom, I am a “white” man. According to accepted human logic, white is also a colour used to paint halls, houses, and pejorative graffiti over the brickwork of major cities. Knowing this, it should mean when I stand before a freshly painted white wall, I vanish from view; being as so me and the wall, are one and the same colour. But I don’t. I remain clear as crystal, for all to see. My skin is not actually “white”, it’s more a pale olive shade; which doesn’t have a name. If I was pure white, I’d resemble Casper the Ghost; which I don’t.

According to accepted human wisdom, the actor Will Smith is a “black” man. According to accepted human logic, black is also a colour used to adorn Death Metal guitars, decorate Metallica albums, and paint the bedrooms of angst ridden teenagers. Knowing this, it should mean if the actor Will Smith sticks a 12inch vinyl copy of Metallica’s Black album over his face, it would make him appear to have a square, 12inch head attached to his body; as well as having a Snake tattoo on his lower right chin. But he doesn’t. He’d simply look like a guy holding up a copy of a classic album, to cover his face; which would be silly, as Will Smith is a good-looking dude, and probably buys CD’s. Naturally, these same principals apply to the “brown” and “yellow” people of this world; and their respective colours.

Every living human is defined on the outset by skin-colour. Even after billions of Homo Sapien evolutionary years, the tone of a basic protective shell; developed by nothing more than generations of variation in climate, is still given such an important place in life, regardless of shade. This doesn't mean Will Smith should not be proud of the shade which forms a part of who he is - much less myself or anyone, for that matter. It is just that as a whole, our skin-tone just isn't important, as much as it isn't even accurate.

Forms of art, music, politics, sports, culture, class, morality, ethics, shit, even intelligence, are all in their own ways broken by ideas of incorporating racial issues, born from false stereotypes created around it; when it shouldn’t even be an issue in the first place. It makes me wonder if the whole world went blind, how long till we created vocalism? Separation born from tones of speech. I guess a lot of it is the result of tribal fears from years gone by, slowly catching up on a now more civilized society. But it’s still ridiculous. We have this incredible, powerful gift called a brain, yet still fail to grow beyond an outdated mode of survival; believing anything 'different' is a threat to our existence. Much like the decent folk in life, wankers comes in all colours, shapes, and sizes. It would actually be much simpler if all “Whities” were good, and all “Blacks” were bad. But that shit aint the truth… it is far, far from the truth.

No other species on Earth creates modes of separation, based solely on the tone of a person’s skin. You don’t see ceiling Cats creating gangs of Apartheid, against the gingers or basement Moggies – calling them dirty Miggers; whipping them hard as they carry noms from distant houses, while forcing a secular religion upon their fears and molesting their ancestors. By all accounts, Cats couldn’t give a fuck – you leave them alone, they’ll do the same. Racism to a Cat is irrelevant; you feed them, they like you. You don’t feed them? Fuck you pal, I’m finding someone better. 

Racism is ridiculous, and tragic. A level one brick wall in the computer game of life, made complicated by the greed of Caucasians from lands past, and the lack of education by their African ancestors to understand the exploitation at that time. It isn’t even an end-boss; like Cancer, AIDS or any of the other shit the Devil tries to fuck us with. Racism is a stupid, man-made ideal, which serves no purpose; except to remind us of how far we have come, but how much further, we still need to go.

Perhaps this is the real irony of human beings. Given the gift of a basic self-awareness, in order to perhaps figure out the mysteries of existence, and yet they spend 95% of the time arguing over the importance of skin-tones; creating stupid shit like white only golf clubs, or black music awards - when did music have a skin-colour? Some things make sense culturally; hairstyles, foods, etc. But much like Tiger Woods as a golfer, or Eminem as a rapper, if you stop people doing shit because of their skin-colour, imagine the amount of missed potential passing our species by. Letting skin define us, is an insult to every last potential in any human being.

Tomorrow, Will Smith will awake, eat food, have a shit, get dressed, and do a bunch of stuff. So will I, so will you, so will everybody else. The skin-tone will not make any difference biologically; only potentially in a social manner. Be proud of who you see in the mirror. Be even prouder of who you are in your heart. Because that, is where the real colour of life lies...

  

Lee.