Where Is Your Heart Today?
Recent events in the US news has raised a critical awareness of how racism persists in the legal system, where 'a jury of your peers' really isn't. Having been raised as a white middle class citizen, my own journey has been met with limitation and fear, as being a product of my own upbringing. My mother, Irish, from a poor blue collar family, raised us in an unconscious yet 'accepted bigoted' culture. During my childhood in the 1960's & 70's I was blessed to be exposed to those who would teach me otherwise.
What I became aware of was the 'assumed standard of superiority' that isn't even spoken but inferred. In my earlier life I had to recognize this within myself and make a CONSCIOUS choices to change, to allow and confront the fears that came with giving up a (false) sense of power.
Later into my adulthood, (1990's) I was at lunch with a friend & coworker, and she's a beautiful strong black woman. We were at a cafe run by mostly gays in San Francisco's Mission District where multicultural consciousness is 'the way'. To my own astonishment, the young white waitress would not look at my friend or take her order. At first I just thought she was scattered or distracted. Then my friend realized it was because she was black. At first I disbelieved her, I thought "Naw, not here, not in SF, not in the neighborhood that is mostly non-white!" Well, as the next hour moved forward, I watched her take other peoples orders. Some of the customers were white, some were mixed.. and she was ignoring the non-whites too! I was shocked. We realized she wasn't doing this intentionally, but unconsciously.
My friend was kind, compassionate and knew that I needed to have my consciousness raised. She said, the woman has been taught (unconsciously) to not see blacks. It wasn't even a malcontent on the waitress's part, it was pure ignorance and pure lack of socialization remnant from a poor upbringing. When we left her a tip, my friend wrote her a note instead. The note was to let her know that we are not withholding her tip not only from poor service, but also to help this waitress become aware of her 'blindness'. We left and of course, never patronized that establishment again. We called the owner and told her about our experience hoping this would be a consciousness-raising event all around.
This was eye-opening to say the least. I was startled to realize that my self portrait of being a liberal, open minded and feminist, needed some work. Ten years later, I found out I was at least one third Native American from my fathers side. (This is a whole other story!) But, when I learned of this it blessed me with a deepening understanding how 'unconscious fear' can be at the root of racism. I am not an expert per se, but drawing from my own life experiences, I learned that 'consciousness' navigated by the heart can change everything, your life view, your world view, your sense of personal identity. Your relationship to your community, your perception of right and wrong changes as you change and grow- mature.
Wrong is when you disregard anyone or anything because of their differences, their race, their religion, their lack of knowledge. Like my patient friend at lunch, I ask you to exercise patience, and creating a breath of space to allow your own heart, spirit and mind rise above. Please choose compassion, choose love for ALL humanity. Don't get caught up in a vibe of righteous vigilantism, and instead choose righteous indignation and then use this frequency to educate others. Allow your anger to be a catalyst for educating those who are your family and friends and offer up an all inclusive perspective. Be bold. If we work on cultural ignorance together, perhaps we can rise to a new standard of exercising proper justice, create a unified vision of what we as a collective consciousness can do to level the table of true justice rather than an antiquated product of bad education and ignorance rooted in fear.
Please pray and meditate for peace in these tense times, for love that transcends fear and invites a growing consciousness of community that embraces all diversity, realizing that diversity is a precious resource we all must preserve. ~Godspeed
