Race and the Ego

[clara927]

So, I find that I often think of myself in terms of race/ ethnicity. I like to think of myself as 'above' it, but I'm clearly not based on the way I talk about certain things. It has been very hard to get rid of that mindset. Which is essentially an "us" vs. "them" mentality. Maybe because I've been on the receiving end of racism, it's like it's drilled into my brain even when I'm trying not to think about it. I know the attachment to race has something to do with the ego, it has to do with earthly identity. I'm just trying to think of a way for it not to be so present in my thoughts. Or have it not color the way I view situations? How do I let go of it?

[markings]

I think that most of the things we label as racism is actually classism. Sometimes I say "I have no problem with black, yellow or red people as long as they behave like white people" and not all of white people, but white people like me.

Behaviour usually falls under the 'culture' of a people, or subcultures within.

IMO the only way to move away from it is to select universal human values and build a culture around them. This would be a guge project and it may be easier, on a personal level at least, to reject at every opportunity the cultural norms and standards which are against them.

This requires that we do not judge too quickly, and are tolerant within the acceptable expressions. The one, and maybe only thing required, is to hold back one's judgment. Not that this is easy because they seem to come out of nowhere and seems to have a mind of its own. What we influence over is how we react to them surfacing.
We do not have to give in, do not have to use words without thinking. We can reflect on words and deeds before we give them expression in the world.

[sparklekaz]

Dear Clara,

Racism for me is about ignorance. Learned values and prejudice. I believe in today's society where so many people of different beliefs and cultures live together, racism is slowly breaking down and diminishing. The children of today are taught in the classroom about the history, traditions and culture of other races. Instead of seeing others who are different to them as being inferior, they admire them and marvel at their rich diversity. Learning that the lives of people from other races are no different to their own.

We all have the same hopes and dreams, the same fears the same pressures of life to face. Rather then learning from their parents who may harbour prejudice learned from their parents, and so breaking the perpetuating negative cycle. We are all guilty of being judgmental and making assumptions. Using an example, a whole family can earn a bad reputation, based on the negative behaviour of just one person in that family. The children now know that it is not about colour, it is about the person. There are good and bad in all walks of life.

I believe racism comes from fear, fear of others who are different, no matter what race they are, this is why education is so important to eradicate it. I lived in Wales for many years and as a English person encountered quite a bit of racism. The English are historically not very popular with the Celt's. I can understand why, as there is a lot in our past that accounts for this. But my belief is that all that happened a long time ago and if people had been as educated and aware as they are now they would not have behaved as they did.

I believe we cannot live in the past, harbouring grudges and resentment for what was. If people hang on to that, they will never move forward. We cannot change what was but we can make sure that those things do not happen in the future. Sometimes too it is all to easy to blame feelings of low self esteem on to one thing. So this is where I agree with you that the ego comes in to play.

I don't believe it is all ego, but definitely a significant factor. As your life experiences will definitely influence how you feel and react. So working on the ego has to benefit us. Deep down we know it is about how we feel about ourselves not what others think. For me the answer is always Love. Love yourself for who you are, focus on all your great qualities for they are many. We are all one and I have never felt any other way.

Love and light
Kaz

[markings]

It may have something to do with fear if the other has an overwhelming number.

Let me make an example from the animal realm. Rats live in large families. They recognise a family member by its smell. Take a rat from a different family and put it into the first family and that rat is savaged to death in no time and in the most vicious manner.

Do the same thing but make sure by means of a wire cage that family 1 rats cannot get to the family 2 rat. Give it a few days allowing the family 2 rat to absorb the smell of family 1, then remove the cage and the rat 2 is fully accepted by family 1.

Instead of smell we work by looks.

I don't think that learning about cultures will make a major difference, and there are clearly things which are not, and should not be acceptable, ever. The subjugation of woman in Arabic and other cultures, polygamy in African cultures, keeping and slaughtering of animals in a non-human ways, animal sacrifice, etc.

Shouldn't the different cultures themselves be able to bring forth the beauty and power of their practices and rituals in everyday life? That it requires an essentially white culture to teach about other cultures is absurd, an exception may be where the other culture has already been so decimated that its survival is questionable.

The time for narrow tribal cultures is over.

[sparklekaz]

Dear Markings,

Visual discrimination does seem to be the main focus of racism and I agree there are some things that are unacceptable. But I feel that is more about behaviour then racially discriminating based on the colour of a persons skin. History has shown that the world has made a stand and objected to any form of abuse of human rights. I think its important to show the difference between that and simply objecting to a cultural practice. I think there is a fine line we must walk between showing distaste for something and dictating to another race how they should practice their religious or cultural beliefs.

In the classroom I would say it is the beauty of a races culture that is emphasised, I am sure as those children grow up and decide to learn more about the beliefs and cultures of others, they will see for themselves any discrimination or enforcement of a painful and humiliating practice. Remember these are things that the people themselves are doing not something forced upon them from the outside world. Traditions and modes of behaviour take time to change. Many of the practices you speak of are slowly being eradicated, from the inside.

I do not agree with your comment about it being a 'essentially white culture to teach other cultures'. I believe that it is about education and awareness and this is something that all countries are doing in their own way. Again, I reiterate, I believe it is not for anyone to decide about what is deemed acceptable or unacceptable, other then that country and its people themselves. True changes never take unless it is something that a people want for themselves. I believe history has shown that. All we can do is try to show an example of a better way of being, which is the spiritual way.

[Leon]

Is not your first statement Markings the ego speaking. "I have no problem with black, yellow or red people as long as they behave like white people" and not all of white people, but white people like me.

You have no problem with anyone if they are just like you. No wonder the world is up in arms against each other. This is not the way forwards my friend. What if the other people are saying, I have no problem with you Markings if you was black like me.

You forget that there are idiots in all cultures and colours, just as their are wise people from all colours and cultures.

Discrimination on colour, shows that you do not look beyond appearances. The truth of the person lies deep within. We cannot divide people by a mere look. If we did we would be separating us from most of life on this planet. Everyone is unique, everyone should be seen for their own good and bad traits, they should never be judged on colour. For he who throws the first stone, is usually the one who needs to look within most. The problem is more likely to be with them and not the object of their subjection.

[jessiethecorgi]

i am fascinated by different cultures. people of other races just look really cool to me. but when i encounter people who are prejudice against me i have great fear. these people commit attrocities or torment daily in the name of racial purity. they are usually experts in the law and can manuever their victims to be the ones in offense in a quarrel that they start. they disrupt my serenity so very bad. i have so much fear. and they disorient my efforts to be unconditionally loving because i feel i have to defeat them to be safe from them. that is the malady of racism. the victim feels a need to go to war to live in safety. so love is deflected. when i try to reach these people or show love they use this to analyze me and find ways to get my goat or otherwise psychology abuse. i am also angry at them for being hostile towards me. they can be so disrupting. what should i do with my mind in these situations.

[gruntal]

It's funny how things happen and they might not be so significant but they just happen at some time and place and the contrast - the utter stunning undeniable contrast - hits you hard. You don't forget.

About 45 years ago my family moved from a predominately Black neighborhood to a practically lilly white neighborhood. But the racial statistics really paled beside the social economic facts of life: one group was mostly poor immigrants from the Deep South U.S.A. who just happened to be Black and the other group was made up of mostly White shop keepers and/or skilled craftsman. I felt from day one I was in a vastly different world. (I do not have time now to elaborate which was better or dwell on emotional scars fom attending public grade school).

Eight years I finally FLED that place and moved into a small town 50 miles away that was also, like my early childhood home, predominately immigrant. This time it was Mexican. Little or no professional people where I live and education levels modest; standards are very low: the number of loose dogs and associated road kill are very much evident everywhere you look. Oddly I feel at home. I feel like an alien myself but with higher standards. An albino Scotts Irish in New Tiajuana?!

Once again I have moved from one little world to another. My friends sometimes ask me "why". It is not easy to explain although I feel very deeply where I live. The contrast from day one was stunning and was probably necesary for my survival.

But I still flaunt my different ethnicity. I am NOT letting go. Nor is it even desirable to do so. I do not want to become so much like the others and they do not want to become like me.

What I do find very telling is that I do volunteer work at the Railroad Musuem and thru my Amateur Radio Club and yes I am a bit surprised at first to see the others there that seem initally out of place. At one point in time the head of diesel service was a GIRL! She couldnt bake cookies so she supervised the servicing of EMD and ALCO locomotives and all us men cooperated with her. We all got greasy and had a splendid time.

But that does not in any shape or way mean I regret being a pinkish white European type male that only speaks English. It probably doesnt effect my thinking all that much anyway since no matter what you think all life is an adventure to be exerienced.

And where I live you can not experience life unless the Welcome Mat is out for every race and ethnic group ( and even girls with "cooties") (not you Michelle you were a gem) that comes along and wants to do the same things you do.

I do still wonder how I got here though and the others might think the same about me ..............

[clara927]

Markings,

This post isn't spiritually related but I feel like it needed to be said
The reason why "white" culture is seen as acceptable and the standard is because of years of invasion, colonization, slavery, etc. The British empire (and the Spanish empire) took over most of the world and the result was that their culture and the derivatives of their culture was seen as the standard.

What you have now is the reemergence of a lot of native cultures and that is clashing with the "white" culture that's been dominant for about 400 years or so. Also, your comment about sacrifices being part of native cultures isn't valid because witch burning and heretic burning are European practices and technically human sacrifice... Human sacrifice unfortunately seems to be an international thing. There are a lot of issues with the dominant culture that many don't see because we are immersed in it and can't view it objectively.

I think learning about other cultures is extremely necessary if change is going to occur. A lot of it needs to be rediscovered, because most people are unaware of other cultures because it;s glossed over in school. For example, during the Belgium occupation of the Congo, the Congolese were made into slaves on their own land forced to collect rubber or die. The Belgium military forces their would cut off the hands of men women and children who didn't meet rubber quotas. They would then put the severed hands in baskets to prove that they had checked. The Congolese population was severely decimated. Doesn't the behavior of the Europeans in the Congo seem like the behavior of savages to you? So before you go around saying that we have nothing to learn from cultures that practice polygamy and animal sacrifice... you seem to think that we have a lot to learn from cultures that think it's ok to enslave people and chop off the hands of women and children. This was little more than 100 years ago, a very short time ago in the span of history.

Pretty much every human culture has had a shameful past, but the shameful past of European culture doesn't stop people from teaching European history in schools... so why is there such a pushback against t teaching native, aborigine and african cultures in schools and on international platforms?

I had to be blunt because I don't think there was any way for you to get the irony of what you were saying.

[clara927]

Thank you for everyone who replied.

I know these topics are tense but it's kind of the elephant in the room.

In my last post I was really intense and that the feeling I get caught up in. I feel sad and angry about what happened to these people that were from the same continent as me. And I get emotionally involved. So I tend to automatically identify with people who look somewhat similar to me and when something painful happens to them I feel like it's happening to me. Conversely, when something good happens to those who look like me, I feel a sense of pride. I feel like this may not be healthy in the long term, because it seems based on the external (or maybe it is internal? DNA? I'm still trying to figure that out). I figure, that I'm on this earth and I believe I need some type of physical/ material identity to ground me. But then, I'm probably not going to be in this body forever and it's probably not not the real me. So I'm pretty much trying to find the right balance.

[markings]

May 6, 2012 13:27:51 GMT Leon said:

Is not your first statement Markings the ego speaking. "I have no problem with black, yellow or red people as long as they behave like white people" and not all of white people, but white people like me.

You have no problem with anyone if they are just like you. No wonder the world is up in arms against each other. This is not the way forwards my friend. What if the other people are saying, I have no problem with you Markings if you was black like me.

Leon, I am actually in an interracial marriage and so some parts of my greater in-law family range from true black to any hue in between.
There are family members my wife does not want to associate with. It has nothing to do with color, except that this is the first thing which meets the eye.

My point is, maybe not made very successfully, that as long as we deal with racism on a color level we will remain very superficial and largely unsuccessful in making progress.

[sparklekaz]

Hi Clara and everyone else that has posted on this thread.

I don't see it as the elephant in the room Clara, I think its healthy that this kind of subject is tackled. For it is only by sharing our own experiences do we understand where we are all coming from in the way it makes us feel.

I can understand you being proud of who you are and where you come from as we all should be. No one should be made to feel inferior by another. For we are all equal, we are primarily human beings who should take care of each other, no matter what the colour of our skin is.

I agree with everything you have said and you made a very valid point, we all no matter what culture we come from have shameful episodes in our history. When I hear the stories of what has happened to different cultures over time it makes me cringe and feel physically sick. How one human being could treat another like this is beyond me.

It has been proven that Africa was the cradle of humanity. When I found out about this it gave me such a warm glow inside. Colour has never been a barrier to me, but I have been held at arms length because of the colour of my skin and that has made me sad. We are all just trying to survive in this world, we all have experienced hardship, illness and heartbreak. So I would say to anyone, don't allow preconceptions or bad experiences to colour how you view the world and the people in it. We have so much we can share with each other and we need each other.

Love and light
Kaz

[Leon]

It opens the debate up Markings, as we all see discrimination at some level. If we can find the root cause, we can begin to understand it and lessen it within our lives. None of us are perfect, we all are seeking to understand better our own ways of being.

[Floraloak]

Being a daughter of immigrants, I often was shunned by my peers in school alongside the native children, black children, and other immigrant children… I was called all sorts of names, bullied, beat up, etc… so like many others all over the world I have experienced discrimination.

From where I sit… I agree with Kaz in that every culture has shameful episodes in our history… in my culture’s most recent history we have the atrocities that tore the former Yugoslavia apart…(there’s an age old mistrust and hostility that’s still alive and well even today) so even when colour is not in question there’s always something….

I believe, in order to begin to move away from any of these prejudices…we have to be willing to ‘forgive’… without forgiveness we cannot move forward… without forgiveness we cannot let go of the past… without forgiveness we cannot heal the ‘sins of our fathers’… or to answer another question Clara and Jesse had… we cannot heal our generational curse…this bit about ‘seeing our differences’ is the curse if you will, that we all have in common… and in order to let it go and not continue to carry it with us into the future… we must be willing to forgive…

Forgive those who concurred our ancestors, forgive those who oppressed our ppl… forgive those who tortured, beat, and even killed our ancestors… we also have to forgive all those ancestors who carried this resentment, who carried the anger and anguish of the past… forgive those who passed on this anger and pain onto their children… forgive those in your own life who burn this candle labeled ‘anger and pain of the past’…. And most of all forgive yourself for carrying this torch of the past for your ancestors…

God loves all of us equally, race, colour, creed, doesn’t matter… God also sent many prophets, angels, and men of wisdom to teach our cultures how to let go and forgive… he send Jesus to show us how to live in love… not war… we should all be asking ourselves, why is it that we cannot live a life of love …. There is no one to blame but ourselves… and if God can forgive us… what makes us all think we’re better than God… why can we not forgive ourselves and others… ?

Forgiveness is the key… from there we can open the doors to all the other things mentioned in everyone’s posts… education, love towards each other, seeing ourselves not as black or white, red or yellow, but as humans… only then can we become universal citizens…

In all forgiveness and love
Silvia

[jessiethecorgi]

racism is one of the evils of the world. it is actually satanic in nature as it is very offensive to God. The racism in the US involves people that seek advisarial relationships. if there target does not want to participate in the race war they are antagonized until they hate and want to participate. as the majority is in greater numbers and has the police the fulfill there deviate desires rather than living properly. the agenda can involve a bible witchcraft where the victim is given the beleif that the Klan has the station of giving them the trials and tribulations that every Christian knows is necessary to please God. they create the illusion that they are a golden Hedon with a life full of pleasures and that they have some sort of license from God or cleverly dodge the wrath of God that normally goes along with this. They use; drugs, hypnotism, psychology and even demonolgy putting spirits into their victims. These people are evil and of course are a devil caught in their own devices. The ususally become insane and suffer more than their victims as god is perfectly fair. when we forgive them and choose to go on and live a life pleasing to God, Pharaoh is punished. we always win because we have a loving God who is perfectly fair.

[gruntal]

Although I was only about 7 years old I remember visitiing relatives in the Deep South USA and enjoyed everyone there. Twenty years later one came to visit us in California USA. We were watching a very popular television program at the time called the FLIP WILSON SHOW. Flip was doing a skit along with Ruth Buzzy and since this was crazy ground breaking 1970's comedy competing with the "Hippie" era Wilson called Buzzy "Mother". Mind you Flip was Black and Buzzy was white.

My Uncle just sat there stunned and said "black person!". I imagine under his breath he was muttering "of all the nerve". That was a wake up call to me how much I was immersed in my multi-ethnic culture and how isolated the Deep South mentality must have been. Now I just don't enquire about my relative's involvement in the KKK. It was more likely Masonic and Easter Star. I can't relate to that either. Indeed if my Southern relatives were all a bunch of bigots (which they weren't) at least they did have some sense of community; something in my enlightened state of mind still eludes me.

My parents thought Flip Wilson was outragiously funny. No problem there as long as he never made it any futher then the living room TV screen. My father did have problems being a White groundskeeper working at a predominately Black high school. They threw rocks at him and I got a few too if I came to visit that school. I remember in 1965 seeing the black smoke a few miles north of me doing the infamous Watts (Los Angles) Riots when they were torching everything. It was half joke half serious you needed black face make up just to venture there to be safe.

It was easy to get caught up in the middle. It was hard NOT to take sides when your young and tender body might be on the line for death and destruction if you were at the wrong time and place.

Three years after that in 1968 my college elected a Black student body president and a Black home coming queen and we all said "that's nice" and had a big yawn. Assuming anybody much noticed.

[gruntal]

filter edited to "black person" insert racial epitate appropriate to culture or insert * to replace certain letters.