“I just hate having to sit in front of a black person!”, said the young boy to his friend—quite loudly on the school bus. This brash statement was observed during the third week of the new school year, and what made it particularity significant to me, is that it was observed by my youngest daughter who sits two rows behind this young boy.
You see, my daughter is black. And yes, she came home in tears that day. Someone thought she didn’t deserve any dignity because she happens to have beautiful dark skin. That’s all. My daughter is one of the sweetest and most empathetic souls I personally know. I may very well be biased, but I do believe that she is also the prettiest girl in the whole school. And yet, this white boy was not able or willing to look past the colour of her skin to see that. Why? Because she is different from him. I don’t believe for a moment that racism is something inherent in humanity. It is a learned behaviour. But what causes it?
I believe that racism can be traced back to fear, which comes from living your life with an assumption of scarcity. When you live day to day with the assumption that life is a zero sum game. That there is not enough for everyone, this leads—quite naturally to fearful competition for limited resources. Self preservation is a strong instinct. And most people are more than willing to do what it takes to look after # 1.
Me.
This kind of mentality shows up in religion and politics as well. In religion, there is often an assumption that God doesn’t have enough love to go around for everyone. Therefore, only the few people who believe the correct things can experience God’s love. It becomes important to embrace certitude, that I am right about what I believe about God and those other people are wrong. In fact, their wrongness is a threat because they are obviously leading people that I care about (and possibly even me) into deception and thus divine punishment. In their minds, love is conditional and limited.
In politics, working together for the common good by gleaning quality ideas from other parties we don’t necessarily entirely agree with is traded for partisan politics. We demonize and disregard those of other political affiliations, becoming societally fractured and backward in the process.
They are different from me and therefore a threat. And so we turn our gaze to others that look and think like ourselves and surround ourselves with them. This is a means of ultimately protecting myself, by advantaging others who are just like me. It’s like having a layer of insulation around yourself. Subsequently, we push others away who are different and in our perception are a threat to my self preservation. We dehumanize because it’s easier to hate those whom we can perceive as less human. We identify them not by who they are, but by how they are different from me.
That person is black
That person is a liberal
That person is a Muslim.
What’s the solution? The opposite of fear is love. Love as defined by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 does not leave any room for fear. That is why John in John 4:18 says that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment.” Most often the punishment we fear is the actualization of scarcity that we bring upon ourselves by living in that very mindset of scarcity.
What would happen if we woke up to the reality that we do live in an abundant universe where there is enough for everyone? Where self preservation is not necessary because others are looking out for me as I look out for them? What if we realized that the One who is being itself exists as unconditional, limitless, self emptying love? What if we realized that we are all one with the One who is existence and if we participate in that praxis of self emptying love there will be no division, no lack, no perceived difference?
No fear
No racism
What if John Lennon was right in his song “Imagine”?