We all know there are some genuine bigots out there in the world. But for most of the modern world, being racist is a big faux pas. You can’t be seen as a good person and be a racist at the same time. Our ego is primarily attached to one thing, how it looks to other people. So, we made racism unacceptable in ourselves. As a result, most of us have denied, disowned, rejected and suppressed any aspect of us that could be perceived as racist. We became politically correct relative to race. But just because we made racism unacceptable in ourselves, doesn’t mean it went away. In much the same way that making anger unacceptable doesn’t make it so you aren’t angry anymore. You simply created a conscious and subconscious relationship to racism. There is a difference between what is right and what is real.
Everyone in this world is racist. Most of us just don’t admit to it because we need to see ourselves as good and to be seen by others as good. The human mind wants to understand things and assign meaning to things. To do this it goes about the work of organizing and categorizing things in the world. It puts things into boxes; most of which are black or white. It wants to make order out of chaos. The mind does this without us even having conscious awareness of it. This relatively benign tendency is the first layer of racism. If you see people of the same race doing certain things or behaving in certain ways, the mind goes to work equating those behaviors with that person’s race. We call this a stereotype. The human mind wants to stereotype everything we come across. Stereotyping when it comes to race is a form of racism. But we all hold these stereotypes and it is important that we admit to them and become consciously aware that we have them. So what I want you to do is to make a list of all the racial stereotypes both positive and negative that you have that you can become consciously aware of. For example:
Black people can’t swim or black people have the best rhythm White people are self-centered or white people are classy Hispanics are greasy and dirty or Hispanic people are good lovers Asians are poor or Asians are smart Your answers will be unique to you because of your upbringing, nationality, race, culture and personal life experiences. But this is the time to become completely aware of what they are, no matter how bad or good it may sound. Be real about what actually resides in this aspect of your own shadow.
The second layer of racism comes in response to the structure of the human ego. The ego is nothing more than a sense of separate selfhood. A sense of self is not innately a negative thing if it is a tool used by the soul. But if the tool begins to use the user, it is very dangerous indeed. The tool of consciousness evolution, called Ego, begins to use the user when it feels threatened. It goes into a state of defense. It pushes the threat away from itself. This is when the ego becomes dangerous. The ego perceives itself (and is therefore strengthened) through comparison. It compares itself to other things in the world. And the ego needs to see itself as good, superior, right and justified. So, the ego uses the mind to look at these stereotypes and decides what those observational stereotypes mean in relationship to itself. The ego uses the mind to look at these stereotypes and seeks to make itself feel good, superior, right and justified by contrast. For example, if a stereotype I hold is: black people are unsophisticated, my ego can feel sophisticated by comparison and therefore see that person as inferior to me. That then determines how I treat them.
It is this second layer of racism that creates the real problem. It is to believe that all members of a certain race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. This leads to prejudice and discrimination and antagonism. Positive racial stereotyping does create pain in the world but obviously the reason we are not worried about positive racial stereotyping is that it doesn’t lead to as much pain in the world as negative appraisal often does. Appreciative notice creates a condition of inclusion whereas negative appraisal creates a condition of exclusion. If my mind has perceived multiple Hispanic people to be greasy looking or dirty, my mind decides that is how Hispanic people generally are and then my mind goes to work deciding what that means for me. It draws conclusions, which enable me to function in the world relative to Hispanics. If my mind decides that Mexicans are dirty, my mind could then make it mean that they are unhygienic or unsophisticated and so I need to keep my distance from Mexicans so I can stay clean and keep my status. It is what we make the negative stereotypes mean that causes real damage. To understand more about how this works, watch my video on YouTube titled: Meaning, the self-destruct button. If the mind assigns meaning to racial stereotypes that causes the being to feel threatened, prejudice, discrimination and antagonism is the result. It is at this point that I want you to look over the list you made of racial stereotypes. Ask yourself relative to each stereotype, what do I make this mean? Then ask yourself, how does that meaning change my relationship, thoughts, words and actions relative to people of this race?
No one on earth is born a bigot. We are not born racist. We are socialized into families and cultures where racist perspectives exist. We adopt those perspectives so as to establish solidarity and belonging with our social group instead of being ‘cast out’ and ‘made inferior’ by our social group. We are not born with meaning intact. When we are young we are fed meaning by the adults in our lives. We are fed painful meaning about other races by the social groups we belong to. We also become racist based on painful personal experiences that we have.
The most important thing to see is that racism doesn’t just hurt the people on the receiving end of the racism. There is pain inherent in being racist, lots and lots of pain. To carry around painful beliefs and painful meaning and to live with a worldview of exclusion is painful. Living life according to the ego’s estimation is an acutely painful state. It also means we cannot actually connect with people because we cannot see beyond the race of the person in front of us.
For example, if a stereotype I hold is that whites are rich, I might make that mean that they are going to see me as less than them and this may cause me to feel bad about interacting with them. So I can see that in response to that meaning I say demeaning things about them to try to make myself feel a sense of increased status. I avoid them all together. I only take jobs that cater only to people of my own race. If I look deeply, I can see how I have not been able to get to know a single white person deeply because of this. I am separated from an entire group of people in the world. I fear them more now because I avoid them. This makes me uncomfortable and tense in the world. I have given up many job opportunities just because of this. And this has caused me considerable pain.
So, for a moment I want you to look over the list you have completed with your racial stereotypes and what you make those stereotypes mean and how that meaning makes you think and behave. This time, try to see the various types of pain this has caused you and does cause you today. Also, try to see if you can figure out where these stereotypes came from. Which stereotypes were adopted and which ones came from painful personal experiences.
What we don’t want to admit to (but what I’m going to tell you today) is that stereotypes exist for a reason. They don’t just come out of thin air. This is why most of us spend incredible effort trying to disprove stereotypes associated with our specific race. There are exceptions to every generalization. For example, there are black people who are excellent swimmers. There are Asians who are bad at math. There are white people who are poor. There are Hispanics who are absolute neat freaks. But we have to be adult enough to go beyond our defensiveness and to look at these stereotypes that exist in the world and see if there is any basis in truth to the generalizations that are being made. This is the only way that we can collectively address these issues. If we are being too politically correct to face these issues, no change will actually be made to the world. For more information about being politically correct, watch my video on YouTube titled: Political Correctness. We become racist as the result of pain. The ego takes over when the being feels threatened. So, if we become racist as a result of pain, the question is, what pain? I believe the reason we cannot overcome racism is because we are addressing the very real pain of the person who is on the receiving end of the racism but not the very real pain of the person who is being racist. Being racist is unfair to people, but we turn the racist into the bad guy and the victim of the racist into the good guy so we cannot recognize that what unites them both is pain.
The racist himself does not know that pain is what the racism is about. The pain is the vulnerable root of the racism and if that pain was resolved or healed, the racism (which is just a branch off that root) will not exist. We may have had a painful experience in our personal life (or several) relative to people who belong to a certain race. Or we may be in pain because of pain passed down through the generations so that each generation will grow up with it. Sometimes racism becomes a part of our own racial identity. This is especially true relative to the issue of slavery, genocide or other forms of racial injustice. For example, at first part of white racial identity was prejudice against blacks for inferiority. Now, this is reversed and part of black racial identity is prejudice against whites for the injustice of slavery. So the pain you could have relative to a certain race could be the empathetic pain you feel for your ancestors as a result of the stories your parents have told you about the bad things a certain race has done in the past to your race. After we become aware of this root, we need to be willing to have open dialogue with one another about the vulnerable, painful root below our racism. We need to be open about HOW we became racist. And this openness must be met with understanding and empathy and emotional validation. Not attack and defense. To understand more about how to deal with someone else’s negative emotion, watch my video on YouTube titled: “The Emotional Wake Up Call”. I encourage you to be open about it to a friend or in Teal Tribe or even in the comment section below this video. We need to clearly SEE the pain on both sides of the racism issue to transform it in any way. Once you are open about this vulnerable root pain behind the racism, look back over your list and ask yourself the question. “Can I see the kind of pain this racism of mine might have caused, or could cause people of that race?” This is the time to look deeply into the impact you have had on people, the impact you currently could be having on other people and the impact you could have in the future on people as a result of this racism. Imagine if Hitler had developed this kind of foresight before his Aryan regimen was put into play.
Once you are done with the exercise ask yourself, “Am I open to having a different experience relative to people (or even one person) who belongs to these races?” The vulnerability we have established relative to our racial stereotypes, coupled with openness to a different experience is the critical shift we need to make. It will make us a vibrational match to different experiences relative to specific races. And our racial prejudices will come falling to the floor on their own. The universe will put us in situations and introduce us to people who will disprove them for us.
We are moving in the direction of a socially unified world. A world where people are essentially a beautiful soup made up of different flavors. These different flavors do not need to conflict with one another. They can compliment each other by bringing the strengths inherent in each of them to the table. Races are like flavors. They are expressions of consciousness. They are perspectives. They are not who anyone is. You are non-physical consciousness that is currently expressing itself in human form. This means you are ultimately not even human. You are not a person having a spiritual experience; you are spirit having a human experience. Do not let it define you and do not let it define other people. Help me to make conversations about race, no longer taboo. If we can face these stereotypes and the pain behind them on both sides, racism might just become a thing of the past.