Is Racism Everywhere?

This post is an excerpt from a forthcoming book.

The person who sees racism everywhere makes a coward of himself. He or she invents a racist phantom that rules his life and stops him from being free and self-expressive. He fears the angry look on the faces of others, and assumes those faces see his flaws and weaknesses. He looks at his own skin color and blames that for his failure to flourish in the world. The phantom wordlessly tells him that he cannot be successful because of the oppressive nature of others. 

This comes from a deep-seated, usually childhood, experience that caused one to withdraw when confronted by some irrational behavior of others. The childhood tendency of over-generalization becomes frozen and the child begins to see the disapproving look everywhere, creating tremendous pressure within his body and causing him to feel guilt for no reason. He freezes and refuses action. He retreats within himself and stops fighting for himself because of “them”. The real mistake he makes is that he has learned to fear others, not just some others, but all others.

His over-generalization about people is his biggest mistake because it causes him to needlessly fear people. Certainly, racism exists but it is not endemic or systemic in anything. It is a minor obstacle that can be overcome through reason, productiveness and character-building. It is not an evil ghost lurking in every corner. It is not everywhere on every face and in every mind. In fact, it is this constant fear that leads to self-destructive behavior, immorality and a lack of respect for the rights of others. If a person does not respect himself, how can he respect others?

The fearful individual thinks he must constantly fight against the disapproval he pretends to see, but he does so only within a cocoon that validates the fear and gives it an object (white people or black people, etc.). He never thinks that his phantom is lying to him and that his fear is unfounded. He cannot question something that is "so obvious", he thinks. He even thinks he is participating in the world and contributing, but, in fact, he is hiding his real self from the world, the self that is not defined by skin color. He is, in fact, on a path toward mental deterioration because he refuses to confront his own racist phantom, the racism toward himself that he feels. His avoidances will destroy his life through bad relationships, unemployability and lack of flourishing.

He begins to develop an ideology that supports his fear of others and gives him no chance to learn that people are not to be feared, that color is not an obstacle and that life has great possibilities. He begins to see color as an expression of character and/or the lack of character and he learns to belittle others, all others, because they do not see the importance of color as he sees it. He seeks to impart his ideology of self-hate to others and turn it into an ideology of oppression imposed upon him by others.

When he realizes that the phantom does not exist, that the phantom is really himself giving himself excuses for not acting, he can begin the path toward self-discovery. He will realize that his inner demon has caused him to block off assertive action, destroy his self-confidence and make him into a person with a chip on his shoulder. He will open his mind to reason.

Eventually, he must learn to question his maladaptive emotions, his fear of others. He must learn to defeat the fear that stops him, learn that the phantom of racism is within his own mind, it is irrational and has no real power to stop him except that power he has given it. 

He must learn that the disapproving faces of others are part of that unreal phantom that he has created. He must learn to see that others cannot be an obstacle if he is to have life, love and passion for living. He must learn that he is free, that self-expression is his right and that color is superficial and unimportant when it comes to his own value and that of others.