Racism Is Natural
In order to forestall any anger (or pleasure) based on the apparent message conveyed by my title, that might blind the reader to what I’m about to say, I would like to state my general belief, and apply it directly to the title, that “Your natural reaction is the one you indulge without thinking.”
That said, I’d like to embark on what I hope is a brief description of my personal encounter with my own racism, and how I’ve come to realize that FEELING a racist feeling can’t be helped, without a lot of discipline and/or conditioning. It is ACTING on that feeling that we CAN control quite easily. The problem, as I see it, is that when most people experience the feeling, they either don’t recognize it or don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.
It is my belief that racism is in our genetic makeup. ALL of us have the capability, since it is an integral part of our survival instincts.
I’d like to relate three personal experiences to demonstrate my point. The first two will seem not to be related to the topic, but as you read on, you’ll see how they fit.
One night, when I was 16 years old and beginning to “experiment” with drugs and alcohol, I drank a HUGE quantity of a sweet, grape wine. Any drinker reading this can imagine the “unpleasant consequences” I endured that night and the following day.
Once I’d fully recovered, though, I discovered that whenever I tried to drink a grape flavored beverage, be it soda, grape juice, or anything else, my mind would rebel and I’d feel sick to my stomach with just the IDEA of consuming such a beverage. My “being,” apparently, noted the horrible effects of drinking a beverage that tastes like grapes, and applied a mechanism to naturally prevent me from consuming such beverages. As I recall, I was in my early twenties before I was able to once again drink anything that tasted like grapes. (Yeah, I was THAT drunk!)
A similar instance occurred when I experienced mild food poisoning from, I suspect, a lemon-butter sauce that I’d had on my meal in a restaurant. Once I recovered, I noticed that just the THOUGHT of lemon-butter sauce made me nauseous. Fortunately, this lasted only a couple of years.
The third experience was a bit more complex, but this was the one that actually dealt with PEOPLE and so taught me the lesson I learned about racism (mine, at least).
I had been unemployed for awhile and needed a way to make a living. With a small amount of money in savings, I decided to take out a line of credit on my home and buy a “fixer upper” house. This was my first effort at such a thing; I had NO idea of what I was getting into, and was painfully aware that every person whom I could ask for advice would have an interest in what I was dong, and so couldn’t be trusted.
Long story short, I made just about every mistake it is possible to make, including doing too many improvements and consequently going too far in debt. The whole experience was so stressful that toward the end, every time I got out of my truck to go into the building supply store (to spend even MORE money), I’d look down, longingly, at the revolver I had in the boot on the driver’s side door and think, “One bullet would relieve me of this.”
When everything was finished, I hired a realtor to sell the house. Whether through incompetence, neglect, or design, he made no effort to sell the house. When events pushed me to the point where I HAD to unload the house, this realtor offered to “help” me by buying it from me. Naturally, I had to sell to him at a significant loss.
And, of course, although 90 percent of the negative feelings I was experiencing as a result of my adventure were MY fault, my “mind” projected ALL of those feelings onto this realtor.
And this realtor was of Vietnamese descent.
Soon after the whole ordeal was over, I went to a local, Vietnamese-owned convenience store to pick up a few things. I’d been frequenting this store for about 6 years and was on friendly terms with the owners. However, this time I felt profound distrust and disdain for these people. Fortunately, being the thinking type (well, at least SOME of the time), I -- #1 Recognized the irrationality and absurdity of the feelings and - #2 Immediately knew their source.
It occurred to me that, just as my “instinct” had tried to protect me after drinking the wine and eating the lemon-butter sauce, it was now trying to protect me from what I’d told it was the source of all my bad feelings over the past year and a half.
I knew myself too well to try to just bury the feeling. I’d already come to realize that we can’t help the way we feel and, regardless of how strenuously we may try to deny such feelings, they’re going to remain. And of course, the denial itself will eventually lead to further problems.
I simply noted the feeling, put it aside, and “kept an eye on it.” I don’t know if this was the reason it went away within a few weeks, or if it would have disappeared on its own anyway, but I finally regained my normal mindset and everything went back to normal.
Racism, as I understand it, can also act in a positive way. I’ve read (belatedly) about a fair amount of the sufferings of African-Americans throughout their history in this country. I feel I have at least an idea of the many terrible things their people have endured at the hands of white people. Being white myself, I’d never presume to really know how they felt. However, whenever an elderly Black person, particularly a woman, grants me their smile, handshake, and/or respect, I feel warm affection for them, thinking of all the injustices they must have experienced and witnessed at the hands of white people during their lives, and noting that they’re still able to be kind toward me.
And then I think, “How the heck do I know what, if any, injustice this person experienced or witnessed?” All I have to go by is my own knowledge of OTHER people’s experiences and the color of this person’s skin!
I think people can develop a racist feeling from any source; an experience such as my own, or through conditioning by their parents when they’re children. And we can develop these feelings toward ANY segment of society – police, teachers, politicians, “foreigners”……any group that our minds perceive is dangerous to us.
The trick, I believe, is to be acutely aware, first that the feeling exists, secondly, that the feeling is unjustified, and third, the feeling’s origin.
Self-awareness is the key. In fact, I believe that if we all concentrated more on what we’re doing and feeling at the moment and, more importantly, WHY we’re doing and feeling what we are, we’d all discover that there are far more things that we have in common with the world around us than those that set us apart.