Thinking aloud for a second. The absence of racism requires the absence of race awareness. We don't discriminate on the grounds of hair colour because it simply doesn't occur to us to do so. This thought prompted by a conversation on Facebook about whether "black" is an offensive word when asking for coffee (the conversation didn't get onto the word "white", which I suppose is indicative of something).
When I was young, I read The Trigan Empire in Look & Learn, which was the magazine (sic) my parents bought for me; it came on Saturday mornings. I had to buy my own Strange Tales to follow Doctor Strange (all of this is on Wikipedia now). Anyway, one of the characters in The Trigan Empire, assuming my memory is still accurate, had blue skin. I rather envied that. There was a lot of racism going on in the early/mid-sixties, but it didn't reach my bedroom. His name might have been Keren.
Being aware of racism while ordering a cup of coffee is a problem, possibly for both parties to the transaction. But I don't know how close we get to harmony by changing the words we used. It's a step, maybe, but a conscious step.
When I was young, I read The Trigan Empire in Look & Learn, which was the magazine (sic) my parents bought for me; it came on Saturday mornings. I had to buy my own Strange Tales to follow Doctor Strange (all of this is on Wikipedia now). Anyway, one of the characters in The Trigan Empire, assuming my memory is still accurate, had blue skin. I rather envied that. There was a lot of racism going on in the early/mid-sixties, but it didn't reach my bedroom. His name might have been Keren.
Being aware of racism while ordering a cup of coffee is a problem, possibly for both parties to the transaction. But I don't know how close we get to harmony by changing the words we used. It's a step, maybe, but a conscious step.
