06-07072013
Today I was walking to the convenience
store with my friend and on the street we witnessed and uncommon
incident. An old local man was sitting by the road and another man
(caucasian) was walking from the store carrying a bottle of soda in a
plastic bag. The old man stood up, stopped the other man, took the
bottle from the plastic bag and started walking away with the bottle.
Here we stopped to look at what was going on because the old man just
did it, “this is now mine”, and started leisurely walking away,
not running. The other man was as confused as we were and just
followed the old man for a while. I don't know if he ever got it back
because we continued on.
According to my friend what we saw was
really out of place; she has lived here for 18 months and never seen
anything like it. The culture here is that everything is of common
property, but still people don't exactly “steal” unless they're
driven to it by extreme poverty. The culture of sharing or forceful
claiming might be the cause of the low crime rate – a lot of
stealing is not recognized to be stealing, it's just taking what's
rightfully yours. Which does have a logic of its own as all of the
Earth's resources should belong to everyone, but we do not yet live
in a society where this would actually function through equal
distribution, so for now I just call this coercion and theft.
When we discussed this incident
afterwards I pointed out the obvious “white man” prejudice: maybe
the old man took from the white man because the overall misconception
is that all white men are rich and have plenty from which to share.
My friend then replied that during her stay here she has learned that
these incidents mostly have to do with simple human relations rather
than racism, and that every time when she has tried to solve a
situation without bringing up the possible racial prejudice someone
else pulls out the “racism card” – and this is when I realized
that this is true, that the racial argument is an easy answer, an
easy explanation. To just say “because racism” is to bypass all
of the processes that lead up to racial prejudice or to any sort of
prejudice for that matter. I will now carry responsibility for
supporting racial prejudice by assuming it from others, and by
downplaying a lot of what happens within a human being by compressing
it into a “racism explanation”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe and perceive that all the locals live
according to the misconception that people with “white skin”
(everyone who is not black) is rich in material possessions, and I
forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to
this belief/perception with fear of others judging me and thinking
less of me because of an assumption that is based on nothing but the
colour of my skin and has nothing to do with who I am.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to fear being unfairly judged because it affects
how others treat me, behave around me and relate themselves to me in
spite of my own application.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that if others choose to believe
their perception of me in spite of my application, there is nothing I
can do about it but to move on to other people and other
circumstances where movement might be possible.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to use the concept of racism to explain human
behavior without looking into what causes racism to formulate –
what exactly accumulates into racism.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not look at myself and how I have lived as
racism in order to figure out how racism is created.
--
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to think of people of different ethnicities as
mine as “others” - the ones that are opposite from me, separate
from me, disengaged from me.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, as I have always lived in a homogenous society
with one dominant ethnicity, to define this one dominant ethnicity as
“familiar” and “safe” and react with fear whenever I come
across people of an ethnicity I have defined as “unfamiliar”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the physical
appearance of a person is a boundary that separates us from each
other, like a wall standing in between us, not stopping to actually
face and interact with the other to see, realize and understand that
the wall is a wall of FEAR which I have created and imagined to be
real.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself within my fear to avoid facing a person of a
different ethnicity, thus stopping myself from seeing, realizing and
understanding that we are both LIFE, that we both breathe and move
and have beating hearts and pulsing bodies, and that in that we are
absolutely equal – the amount of LIFE in both of us is equal.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to be moved by my fear of “the others” into
avoiding contact with those who I have defined as “unfamiliar” /
“alien”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to avoid eye contact with people of “unfamiliar”
ethnicities.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to avoid touch contact with people of “unfamiliar”
ethnicities.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to avoid conversation with people of “unfamiliar”
ethnicities.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to interact with people of “unfamiliar”
ethnicities through fear, reservation, reluctance, tension,
stereotyping, assumptions - never giving these people a fair chance
because I never allow myself to look at who they actually are with
eyes unclouded by fear.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to live as prejudice by believing that “I know”
something about the other better than he/she knows it him/herself,
not realizing that this claim is arrogant as well as absurd because I
cannot know the subjective experience of another, especially not
based on first impression alone.
When and as I see myself avoiding
contact with a person of an “unfamiliar” ethnicity – I stop, I
breathe and I realize I am erecting an imaginary wall in between two
equal beings of life. I stabilize my breath, find my heartbeat if
possible and I move myself out of my position of hiding by physically
opening myself up by releasing muscle tension, turning to face the
other and making sure my posture is open, relaxed and supportive. I
search myself for any trace of prejudice and remind myself that in
fact I don't know anything about the other person for certain.
I commit myself to no longer accept and
allow my racial prejudice to move me by utilizing the self-corrective
statement above.
--
I was just talking with my friend about
the reoccurring themes we have discussed lately and I noticed that I
was about to pull out another compressed explanation – this time
only it was not the “racism card” but the idea of this culture
being in a “teenage” state of development which I have used to
explain immature behavior in relationships. I realized that there are
more of these explanation cards than just the racism one, and I will
deal with this issue separately.
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