Why do we stare at gore, destruction and death? Millions of people recently experienced death and grand destruction as a result of hurricanes. Why do people find themselves getting lost in the stories, pictures and fear of these disasters and others, e.g., car accidents and horror films?
It is an effort to master an old wound or perception. Let me explain.
A child spends his or her first 2 to 3 years not knowing that anything exists beyond what s/he can see. Therefore, all of the world is like magic! The child’s parent appears and disappears out of a room. If the child awakens in the crib and cries, the parent magically appears to lift the child from the crib. If, however, the parent does not quickly appear, the child feels abandoned and in his or her fear of abandonment, they instinctually know they will die. This fear of dying or not being able to survive I will call fear of destruction.
A child also sees the world from an egocentric perspective, i.e., s/he is the source or cause of all that is happening. So, when parents or providers falter and behave in an angry or frustrated way, a child must perceive his- or herself as the bad to keep the overseer as good. In other words, children see themselves as the sinners among saints. This way they are in a good safe world and as long as they control their behavior they will be ok. If, however, children see themselves as the saint among sinners, they are trapped in a haunted house with no one there to save them. They sense this. So defensively they turn the situation inside out to make themselves the bad so their world remains good. This is why movies of hauntings are so successful!
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“We judge ONLY in the way we are fearful of being judged.” Kristen Bomas
PREJUDICE — a part of us all — some conscious and some not conscious – all destructive of those we judge – black magic – painful and imprisoning to the targeted people – keeping fear alive in the prejudiced person – goes against free will – absent of compassion, acceptance, love – debilitating…
Prejudice showed on my Facebook pages this month. Likes and number of people reached dropped noticeably. Some posts getting 0 likes or less than 30 reaches. I was saddened. Black faces, prominent black faces, were in almost all of those posts in an effort to honor Black History Month. Slaves — they went unnoticed, judged as unworthy except as labor. We each have trauma somewhere in our history and know that it flows onward. Time does not heal trauma. It takes an active participatory involvement to heal trauma. When it is a culture that exists within the American people it is our responsibility to actively participate in the healing of each of our subcultures: Black, GLBT, Latin, Asian, Israeli, MidEastern and more.
Imagine that each culture in this country is like an organ in your body. If an organ is faltering it takes time for it to heal. If an organ is attacked with a cancer it takes more than just you to heal that organ. All other organs in your body are affected by the organ that is cancerous. Your body is out of balance. You are not able to function as completely as you were when all organs were strong and healthy. If you do not treat that organ it will die and you may too. To treat the organ it will take more than just you because the attack to the organ is bigger than that which you can handle on your own. This is a metaphor to the cultures (organs) of our American People (body).
We are as inherently trained to be prejudiced of the Black people as they are to be prejudiced against. They are people. It is time that we, as a Nation, work to radically eradicate the history and patterns that are so inherent in the Black culture that they cannot heal on their own. We would be a stronger nation for it. We would be a happier people for it.
I wish for you all to take but a minute and move beyond your judgments or our Black culture and ask, “What would this country be like if our Black culture was solidly integrated and active in the American lifestyle?”
Next week in Part 2 I will be discussing what people can do to move beyond their prejudice.
It is Black History Month. We tend to focus on Martin Luther King, Malcom X and those men and women who stood out in the fight for acceptance and equality. We conveniently focus on them. The truth of our black culture lies in the true history — slavery. The black Americans did not come to America for freedom and a chosen new beginning in life. They were forced out of their magical homeland and used for the gain of their owners. They went from being human beings living in honor of the land and life to objects of someone else’s gain and intent. This is the core of our Black culture and we are choosing to ignore it when we continue to condemn, judge, blame, and isolate its people.
Holocaust. That time brings up an empathy in most people in our country. We have museums and monuments, and more, to honor those who were brutally destroyed in the holocaust. We have done research that shows the survivors of the holocaust carry with them a post traumatic stress disorder complex that is passed forward in the lineage of holocaust survivors.
Slavery. That word elicits what image or thought in you? How much do you know about the suffering, terror, brutality and destruction of the slaves, our people. It is the basis to our black culture and its people! It is no different than the holocaust. Yet, we do not honor our own people and how that time in our own history has a definite affect on today’s culture and its people. We quietly talk about it but do not experience the truth of the existence of the people who were the slaves. In other words, we keep ourselves disconnected by cognitively talking about that time rather than experiencing the lives of the people.
I am honoring Black History Month this year to do my part to honor the people who gave their lives and families to the beginnings of this land. We fought to free them but we never really did. It is the white man who defined the black slaves. It was the white man who defined the “savage” Native Indian. We destroyed both cultures. Both live in a silent prison of space within this culture, a culture they should be able to call their’s. How do we truly open our doors to diversity within our homeland? Let’s all begin by taking the history of our fellow Americans to heart. Let’s honor the history of the black people.
I invite you all to visit Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana. It is the only museum honoring slavery in the country. We have 35,000 museums and not one (until a few years ago) was in honor of slavery. This museum was created and funded by one man, John Cummings, just a few years ago. It is laden with exhibits and memorial artwork among and within restored buildings and hundreds of first-person slave narratives.
