There Are No Aryans

Recall Galatians 3:28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If someone at work, through duplicity or dishonesty, torpedoes your project or gets the promotion, does it make you feel any better if he shares your race?

I was thinking more about the Afrikaner / Khoisan / Zulu affair yesterday and, of course, the Spanish / Kumeyaay / Comanche parallel as well and realized that the Khoisan / Kumeyaay were doomed no matter who contacted them first. In fact, that scene must have been reenacted thousands and thousands of times throughout history where a primitive tribe gets swallowed up or annihilated by a more advanced one.

What does it matter to the people whose culture is being obliterated what color the invaders are?

In Nazi terms, think about two Aryans. One is shy, bookish and unathletic. The other looks like an NFL linebacker and is aggressive. What difference does it make to the bookish Helmut if the beastly Fritz that takes his lunch pfennigs every day is also an Aryan?

This is at the heart of the Nazi illogic and the truth of St. Paul's letter to the Galatians. Our intersection is not in our racial heritage, but in He Who Made The World. All lifelines cross at that point. The orthodox Catholic kid in the wheelchair at Children's Hospital is related in that most profound way to the atheist, lesbian activist angrily waving her sign at a rally.

Just for illustrative fun, I worked with ChatGPT and wrote a hypothetical conversation between two Kumeyaay who are grateful that their way of life was being annihilated by the Comanche and not the Spanish.

Enjoy.

Title: Blessings from the North

Characters:

• Tochpai – A weathered Kumeyaay elder, deeply skeptical but clinging to cultural optimism.

• Mekhan – A younger tribesman, earnest, confused, and loyal to tradition.

Setting:
A low fire smolders in a San Diego canyon. The sun is setting. Dust hangs in the air. In the distance, a Comanche war party has recently passed through, leaving carnage and chaos. Spanish friars are rumored to be days behind them.

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TOCHPAI: (staring into the fire) Well... at least they shared our skin color.

MEKHAN: (nursing a bruised shoulder) Yes, uncle. It is comforting to know the men who lashed me to the cactus and took my sister now ride under the same sun as we do.

TOCHPAI: Mm. And did you see how proudly they galloped? So free. So... non-European.

MEKHAN: I did admire that. Especially how they didn't burden themselves with roads, books, or crops.

TOCHPAI: Exactly. You let your land speak for you. And they let our blood speak for them. Such reverence.

MEKHAN: (quietly) Do you think the friars will be worse?

TOCHPAI: (snorts) What, with their bread ovens and adobe churches? Their medicines and insufferable alphabet?

MEKHAN: And their... music? I've heard rumors they bring music with harmony. Scales. Repetition.

TOCHPAI: (shudders) Repetition is a tool of conquest.

MEKHAN: But uncle, they say the friars also take children into schools.

TOCHPAI: Precisely. Have you no sense? A child in school is a child not being forcibly traded for ammunition and captives by a noble horseman of the plains.

MEKHAN: Indeed. When the Comanche came, they didn't ask us to kneel. They just lit the huts and told us to scream as loud as we could so they could hear our spirits. And when they tortured my child to death in front of me, I admit I found it culturally enriching. After all, their skin color is roughly the same as ours. It felt... inclusive.

TOCHPAI: So spiritually attuned. Whereas the friars—colonial beasts that they are—will no doubt ask us to write our names.

MEKHAN: (gasps) In cursive?

TOCHPAI: Likely.

MEKHAN: Monsters.

TOCHPAI: But don't worry, my son. For a brief, shining moment, we were liberated by fellow aboriginals who neither planted nor preached, but simply took. And what a gift that is.

MEKHAN: (looks around at the smoking ruins of the village) Yes. What a gift.

TOCHPAI: Come. Let us gather what is left and sing a mourning song for our culture. Before someone builds a chapel on top of it.

MEKHAN: Or a granary.

TOCHPAI: (deep sigh) Such cruelty.

It could be worse. Our kids could be learning to read.