Closeted Skeletons

Some choose to disparage India with the mention of suttee (or sati if you will). Yet not long ago, colonial America burned witches. The little understood practice in India was often though not always voluntary, but the witches at the stake were never volunteers. And one could mention the honor killings which are occasionaly in the news, though the practice is unknown is Islamic Indonesia, as one of many exceptions.  Or, would you mention caste? Yet, certainly, America had a form of caste with its policies of segregation and racial discrimination.  I am told that the word for caste, varna, means color or shade (perhaps related to varnish). Though, nowadays, one sees the whitewashing of unpleasant facts more active than varnishing. And even Plato, in The Republic, mentions four classes of men; gold, silver, bronze, and iron, which was termed the "noble lie", to justify division of laber and to stabalize public discontent.  One might fairly say that Islam divides the world into the camp of the believers, the people of the book, and lastly the idolator-polytheists.

Rather than call someone "black as the ace of spades,"  let us rather simply call a spade a spade.