I am a man who delayed the start today by about half an hour to catch some of the first stage of the Tour de France. I am a man who almost fainted or had collapsed lungs after going all out to get away from a chasing hyena thing for at least half a mile, up a hill, at 6000 feet (will write more in a couple of days).
I am certainly a man who has a lot to live for. But I'm also a man with blemishes. As I mentioned yesterday, there are plenty of things that I could work on to overcome the obstacles within myself in order to truly help others in their time of need.
Perhaps the most troubling part of who I am is the little itch of racism. Let me explain, because I am not racist, per se. I'm not sure where it comes from, really. I remember being a high school student and becoming friends with a Jew. I had no idea he is Jewish when I met him, and after I found out I didn't care. At the time I didn't even fully know what being Jewish meant, but because I knew him I slowly but surely learned what the differences between my faith and his are. Though I did not care at all that he is Jewish, and to the extent that I did care I was only fascinated and interested, I still made some jokes about his being Jewish. To this day I have no idea where I learned to make those jokes. My parents didn't speak that way, none of my friends spoke that way, and I didn't even know anything about Judaism.
Very quickly I realized that Jewish jokes are not at all appropriate if they're in the form of, "haha, you're Jewish." It's questionable whether jokes in the form of, "a Catholic priest, a rabbi, and whomever else are in a bar..." are appropriate, I guess it depends on the audience. Over time as I've developed as a person, as a man of faith, and as a dude trying to live in love with and for others, I've come to see how serious the "they're different" disease is. Whenever I come into contact with something different I have an instinctive reaction against it. I may have learned not to voice certain thoughts that are inappropriate, offensive, or just plain wrong, and I may have learned to pray to God to help me wash those thoughts away, but I still must deal with the very human instinct of fearing what is different.
I remember as I went to school in Vermont, the whitest state in the United States, is when I first discovered my racist instinct. Coming from Massachusetts, a mostly white state, also didn't help any. But in Vermont I was at a convenience store one night buying gas as a somewhat beaten-down car pulled up and a young black man stepped out of the car. He had his pants pulled down low, a bandana around his forehead, and it was late at night. My first reaction was to go to the back of the store and then leave when the other man wasn't looking. That reaction only stuck with me for a few seconds before I told myself I was giving a new meaning to 'unreasonable.' I stayed where I was, got in line to pay for my gas pump, and left the store a few minutes later unscathed. Of course I wasn't hurt, of course I had nothing to worry about, of course the black man was and is no different than me. I left ashamed of myself.
Since that night I have given a whole lot of thought to the emotions within me that occasionally make themselves known. I don't think that I am entirely unique, either. Especially for those of us in states like New England or North Dakota, African-Americans are hard to come by sometimes. Is it wrong of us to have an instinctive fear of something that we have no experience of? No, I don't think so. It's hard to prevent a natural or biological reaction. But if we were to ever let that instinct consume us, then we are doing wrong. I think the majority of people reading this blog agree with that already so I won't elaborate much. What I want to focus on, though, is that if we were to fail to acknowledge and confront our instinctive reactions then we also do wrong.
You see, if we go around thinking, "racists are such meanies, terrible people," and draw a big gap between them and ourselves, then we do wrong. The reason is that we might think we are great people for not being racist, and then fail to realize that we didn't bother saying hello to the African-American or Hispanic walking down the street. We might fail to realize that we do actually feel a bit uncomfortable around people of a different race. We might fail to realize that we don't really empathize as much with New Orleans or Haiti as we do with Minnesota (or reversely, with New England as much as we do with New York City). We need to be aware of our reactions and emotions so that we can be fully conscious of what we do about it. Our instincts don't make us racist, so don't be afraid. And even if you really are racist, don't be afraid to admit it. The road to true love is through honesty with yourself and others.
These are important reflections for me and for all of us. It is these hidden feelings that we fail to be honest about that may prevent us from joining the fight against injustice. Many injustices are unfortunately driven by racism, or at least fueled by racism. Remember the outcry following the response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans? A heavy density of African-Americans may have led to a slow federal response. We need to be honest about these things. Are we slow to react to modern slavery because a great number of the 27 million slaves are of a different race? Africans, Asians, and Hispanics are most often caught in danger zones that then suck them into slavery. Are we not quick to compassion because we believe that those in slavery are different than we are?
I don't know. I'm not trying to imply that the answers to these questions are, "yes." I have more faith in all of you and the rest of the human race than to pessimistically condemn you and everyone else. I have more faith in all of you than I do in myself even. But I continue to share with you my personal reflections to raise some questions for thought as we consider the fight against slavery. Are there little instinctive reactions and emotions that we have that, without our knowing it, keep us from working as hard as we could or should to stop slavery?
Again I don't know. I hope, though, that you will continue to really dig deep inside yourself and ask the appropriate questions to get involved in showing all the love inside you to the 27 million slaves in the world. Instinctive racism is something that I must overcome to properly love. What is it for you?
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