Don't forget that you are...

I've been listening a lot lately to a set of songs by Bob Dylan "that inspired Jingle Jangle: The Perfect Crime Turned Inside Out," as the label on the CD puts it. "Hurricane," on the first track, may not have been the single most inspirational song to the author, Jim Rix, but it has been a favorite of mine for half of my life.
    One particular line has been running through my mind, the "Don't forget that you are white" line from the following passage in the sixth stanza:

And the cops are puttin’ the screws to him, lookin’ for somebody to blame
“Remember that murder that happened in a bar?”
“Remember you said you saw the getaway car?”
“You think you’d like to play ball with the law?”
“Think it might-a been that fighter that you saw runnin’ that night?”
“Don’t forget that you are white”

  The "fighter" is the "Hurricane" of the title: "...one time he could-a been / The champion of the world"—as in middleweight boxing. Maybe you saw the 1999 movie, The Hurricane, with Denzel Washington as Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Like Jim Rix's cousin Ray Krone, Carter (and another defendant) were tried and convicted twice, in their case for the murders depicted in Dylan's song. (You start to see how the music of Bob Dylan might have kept Rix going as he battled to get his cousin out of prison.)

"Don't forget that you are white."
    In Ray's second trial, it was "Don't forget that you are Mormon," as the mostly Mormon jurors tried to sort out whether the jagged-tooth defendant (who sometimes didn't even put on underwear¹! and he sure looked guilty!) didn't really bite the murder victim, as the Mormon bite-mark expert, playing ball with the law, said he did ("with scientific certainty").

But I've been thinking about the "don't forget" reminder more generally, as applied everyday in the workings of prejudice.
    Don't forget that you have it made (so don't concern yourself with the poor).
    Don't forget that you're a Christian (so don't go supporting gays and other people the Bible supposedly doesn't like).
    Don't forget that you're a Muslim (so if someone insults the Prophet Muhammad, cut his head off).
    Don't forget that you are white (so nothing Obama does can be any good).

But I've also been thinking, even more generally, that it could be a constructive, rather than a destructive, reminder.
    Don't forget that you are no more deserving than other people (and they are no less deserving than you are). [Or, as some others might say: "Don't forget that you, too, are a sinner."]
    Don't forget that you have no more right to inhabit the planet than other animals do.
    Don't forget that you're a Christian (so love one another).
    Don't forget that you're a Muslim (so help the needy).
____________

1. Some Mormons (including at least one member of the jury, if Rix's observations were correct) wear "magic underwear" for protection from the evils of the world.