UNLEARNING RACISM

(This essay was written in 1995 while living in Elkhart Indiana after having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 15 years)

A few days ago a friend of mine expressed to me his feeling that because of recent violence to acquaintances and in the media he was of the opinion that all “blacks” “should be sent back to Africa.” It has been a long time since I have heard such a statement. Since this man is a dear friend, it upset me greatly. If I heard such racism from the mouth of a new acquaintance I would most likely choose never to invest time in a relationship with the person. This is so far from the direction that I have traveled for so many years (after being raised in that kind of environment) that I simply could not abide it. Yet this is a friend of many years – someone I have shared much with. Someone I respect. Being already invested in this person I find myself forced to look closely and evaluate my feelings.

In Nature, genetic diversity is not only a source of strength, but absolutely essential to continued survival over the long term. Scientists have found that as we lose the broad pool of genes that allows us to react to change in our environment, there is a concomitant reduction in our own, or any species, survival chances. As we lose dozens of species of plants each day – forever, we lose too, the opportunity to reap not just the medicinal contribution from those plants, but also the animal variety that counted on them and their contribution to ecological balance. In other words, without genetic diversity, we are slowly isolating ourselves; perhaps killing ourselves. We need diversity.

Diversity of race built this country and, surprising to many, has sustained and made it the world power and influence it is. In every war since the Revolution, Blacks and Native peoples have participated not only valiantly, but in a much greater number than whites, by percentage of their population. As a country of people, we would not have expanded across the continent without the labor, ingenuity and live of the Chinese. Should my friend ever find himself in need of a lifesaving blood transfusion, he would be out of luck but for the Black Man who developed the process. Ironically, my friend considers himself a jazz enthusiast. I would like to challenge him to go home and, since he believes he can do with out the Black Race in this country, he should then be ethically bound to remove every album, disk or tape that includes or was influenced by a black musician. In no time his shelves will be empty, as will an important part of his soul.

“B.T.A.” was the acronym that he flippantly professed: “Back to Africa.” I should have told him that there was no need to think up a new 3 letter acronym for racist action. There is a good one already. The KKK would gladly contribute its name to the cause.

Tomorrow is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. There was a man who would have taken a bullet for my racist friend, regardless of the hatred and fear that he saw there. Because as Mahatma Gandhi also knew, the fundamental fallacy behind racist reasoning is the belief in the existence of “other.” What Dr. King knew and died for was that there is no “other.” We exist in a web of space-time and gravity that precludes the construct we call independence. There is no such thing. There is only inter-dependence and inter-connection. We are defined not by who we are independently but by relationship with all that exists. When we fight the “shadow” out there, we are really struggling with our fears and something that exists inside of each of us. There is no “other.” There never has been. There never will be. “Other” is a projection.

The statement: “They should all be sent back to Africa implies a perceived ownership of this nation to the exclusion of the Black man (or woman, in this case). Yet, I would not be surprised to hear that the ancestors of most blacks in this country have been here longer than those of my dear friend. He is a White Man, though, and that means assumed ownership and entitlement, as if he has more right to be here than the “minority” others.

The hubris found in people like Rush Limbaugh, David Duke and Pat Robertson may be attractive to those in fear of somehow losing what they have, but it is nevertheless hubris and ignorance. In the face of an increasingly interconnected global economy and communication network unlike anything that has ever existed on this planet, it is also obviously misguided. The world is going another way entirely from separation. If we don’t squander the one time bonanza we call our ecological environment we will have the time to make the transition (doesn’t it strike you as odd that the so-called “conservatives” are those most willing to abuse and poison what sustains us all, hating the regulations designed to take care of and conserve their children’s world? One would think it would be a “liberal” view to squander and not conserve!).

Racism is taught. Hatred is taught. Blacks are taught to hate Whites. Whites are taught to hate Blacks, Chinese, Indians, etc. We are all of us racist because we have all been taught to be so. While my friend was promoting the racial “cleansing” of our nation, I thought of another friend of mine, Millard, who, even if he knew of the hatred would also take a bullet for my friend. Millard is a Black Man. He is also an attorney, and I recall Millard sitting alone in the rain in all night vigil at the gate of San Quentin Prison in protest over the execution of a White Man whom he had never met. He believed capital punishment to be wrong.

It is possible to rise above racism. In an area like the Mid-West, with so much support for racism, it takes a concerted effort and courage to look for reasons in support of the struggle. It was said by John Kenneth Galbraith that “Given the choice of changing one’s mind or proving there is no reason to do so, most people will get busy immediately finding proof that there is no reason to change.” There are a million reasons observable every day that the “other” is not the enemy. The problem is that it is so much easier to not try to change and to prove instead that there is no reason to change. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if you want to see ugliness and evil, you will. You will be drawn to it as the eye is drawn to movement.

There is no denying that there is a crisis of violence within the Black population of our citizenship. Fully 25% of Black men under 25 years of age are in prison. But this is OUR problem, too. It is how we deal with poverty and the drub problem to a large extent. And it is our brothers who are incarcerated. As such, it is that part of ourselves which we refuse to own, nurture, accept and confront with courage and compassion.

If “The way it ought to be” is the way it was, forget it. You can stay with your fear and find every reason in the world to prove that it is someone else’s fault. But physicists and mystics alike agree that there is no “other” except in our minds. The only thing that will hear us is the long journey through the mine field of our fears. We must learn to listen respectfully to each other. There will be many casualties as we learn to face the multiple facets of our human psyche reflected and crystallized in what we call individual races. From there, the step to understanding that we are not so different from the other sentient life forms on this beautiful living world, will not be so great, nor take so long.

I wish you heartfelt best wishes on your/my journey.

Bob Drake

January, 1995 (Journey Books refused to publish this article)