Some US white supremacists according to Facebook posts are finding out with DNA tests they have some African genes, and some African Americans are finding out with DNA tests they have European genes. I think this is a good thing, showing how people from around Earth are genetically related. Maybe everyone ought to take a DNA test to combat racism and morbid narcissism.
One morning in 1959 in the athletic dorm at Hardin-Simmons University, a Baptist university of 1,900 students, at Abilene, Texas, without a single black student at the time, a blue-eyed straight-haired blonde football player on a full scholarship looked askance at me, a brown-eyed wavy-haired basketball player on a full scholarship, in his mirror, as we happened to be shaving next to one another in the dorm shower room, standing with several other athletes who were also shaving, and brushing teeth, combing hair, and so on, facing a wall equipped with ten or so mirrors and lavatories; and for no apparent reason, he said, “You must be part Indian, meskin, nigger, or somethin.’”
It stung, but what could I do? Try to knock his teeth out with a sucker punch?
There was some truth to what he said. I did look different from most white people, and for sure there was a major difference in our reflections in the mirrors we were looking into.
A lady friend in Italy in 1983 told me I did not “look” American, that I looked European.
I have been subjected in the US to five other racist Games similar to the football player’s in various contexts played by white males and two similar Games played by white females, three of the Games having been started by colleagues at Georgia Southern University during 1970–2005. I ignored the psychological message in these Games that I was inferior and not entitled to the dignity and respect I had, not escalating the Games with retaliatory social level transactions, acting as if I did not understand the psychological level message, knowing there was no way I could win given the social settings in which the Games happened.
Why do people play psychological Games? They do it trying to get their human needs met for structure, recognition, and stimulus. Discounting someone in a Game makes some people feel better about their unattractive physical and personality characteristics and their emotional, mental, and behavioral inadequacies and failures. Psychological Games force Victims to recognize and pay attention to the initiating social level Persecuting Game players who see themselves psychologically as Victims, who find the action Games generate stimulating. Psychological Games alleviate boredom, tedium, insecurity, and feelings of inferiority.
While most people play Games to some degree, losers start most of them. This goes for US citizens getting violent in tissue-tearing street demonstrations, and US presidents starting and fighting tissue-tearing wars against weak governments and their subjects in the Middle East.
I took an ancestry.com DNA test about three years ago and found out ninety-eight percent of my genes are similar to those of Europeans and two percent are similar to those of Western Asians in the Caucasus.
Racist Games in the US, the so-called melting pot of Earth, since the first so-called white man set foot on North American soil, have demeaned, devalued, insulted, exploited, harmed, and scarred—emotionally, mentally, socially, and physically—people of various red, brown, black, and yellow skin tones more frequently and in harder degrees than they have so-called white people of various skin tones; but no human on the North American continent has fully escaped their poison and virulence one way or the other in this venomous culture.
The United States could be the most Game-infested nation on Earth, having escalated its Game-playing after the election of Donald Trump as president, an expert Game-player, and a high-functioning narcissistic, who refuses to socially recognize and condemn the grievous harm racial Games cause individuals and groups. He seems to think US citizens have a constitutional right to play racial Games at any time.
It’s inhumane to demean, devalue, discount, insult, or physically harm people because of the genes they accidentally or inevitably inherited.
It’s insane to hate people because of the genes they accidentally or inevitably inherited.
For more on psychological Games, read my book, Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.
To see what I “looked” like in 2005 click on my name below.
Richard John Stapleton is an emeritus professor of business policy, ethics and entrepreneurship who writes on business and politics at www.effectivelearning.net and on Facebook.
I have often read that about ninety percent of African Americans have Caucasian genes, that is, generally speaking, any person with brown or tan skin. In the days of slavery, many owners would couple with their “chattels” both for the obvious reason and for the fact that light-skinned slaves were more valuable than dark-skinned slaves. For instance, Thomas Jefferson’s concubine Sally Hemings has been proven by DNA tests to have been his late wife’s half sister, his father-in-law’s daughter. In a racist society that spawned such obnoxious terms as mulatto or octoroon, anyone who was perceived to possess any black ancestors at all was considered to be “colored”. May I say, in the service of attacking the hapless President Trump, Mr. Stapleton is playing those racist games he pretends to decry.
You could be part right in the sense that psychological Game players sometimes try to do one thing pretending to be up to something else. Psychological Games are generally played outside the awareness of Game players. This post may have been a Game of some sort, but if it was I do not think it was a racist Game. I cannot see how it discounted anyone because of their race. Your response may be a Game. All psychological Games involve Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims and it is hard to know what is really going on. I did not write the post to attack Trump or white supremacists, but to attack hypocrisy, lying, cruelty, and racism. A point of the post is that many people, myself included, generally considered white, have also suffered insults in the US caused by racism, however trivial they might be relative to the insults and injuries of others. My feelings in 1959 in the Game described in this post, having been reared in a venomous racist culture, are not what they would be today, in a less racist venomous culture, but the transactions involved were toxic, and similar ones still happen today. I debated about quoting the Game-starter verbatim, but it was the truth. If somehow racism could be gotten rid of all of us would be better off.
Dear RJS, My problem is that I see us all being gamed by being sucked into, conned, diverted by a “controversy” over Confederate statues and various charges of racism with the attempt to somehow pin it on Trump while we might better concentrate on the fact that we are in a state of permanent war and being governed by a military troika (or should I say junta?) while their virtual prisoner plays golf and twitters. Get rid of racism? Amen. But that appeal has to be made equally to both black and white folks, and good luck with that.
could not agree more. thanks
But, to give the devil his due, many wrongs do not make a right, and for damn sure hating people because of the genes they accidentally or inevitably inherited is insane.
Thanks for your kind replies, Cheers.