With everything kicking off in America, it's hard not to avoid the racism arguments debates online. The other day I came across this quote from Scott Woods:
My first reaction to it was that it was an accusation that you are racist for being born white and isn't that in itself racist?
However, there was something else in it that kept buzzing away at the back of my mind. It was this sentence:
”Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites (some) at other people’s expense, whether whites (they) know/like it or not.”
Here I've scratched through ”whites” and replaced it with the more generic words in brackets to try and focus in a less triggering way on the point being raised.
You see I believe that racism, along with many other prejudices, is a symptom and the problem with only treating symptoms is that we never reach a cure. This is because the underlying cause still remains and I believe that our need for hierarchy, conscious or unconscious, is part of the problem. If you'll bear with me, I'll try to explain why.
First, for those of us getting triggered by “black lives matter,” perhaps this will put things a little more into perspective:
I gather the responsive “all lives matter” movement is upsetting the BLM movement and only recently realised why, because I'm a more literal minded person. I don't always see that other implications can be drawn from what's being said. For those who say all lives matter, perhaps look at it this way. You are correct and by default that encompasses black lives, so “black lives matter” still stands and they aren't trying to say no-one else's lives matter. For those getting offended by people saying all lives matter, perhaps realise that you've accidentally made some of your allies feel alienated and like you value them less than blacks.
If your reaction to what I've said above is something along the lines of, “well they should know better,” “that's their problem,” “I can't help it if they're uneducated” or something else less than sympathetic, then ask yourself if you are pulling hierarchy. You see, every time we do, say or think something that puts us in a superior position, often to make ourselves feel better, it's hierarchical instinct and this instinct is preventing us from moving forward together to find solutions to the core problems.
The original incident that sparked the current BLM protests was police brutality and numerous videos have been surfacing and doing the rounds since. Police brutality isn't confined to one race, although blacks are certainly over represented. The poor are also over represented (and yes, they are also over represented by blacks, hence the subsequent over representation of them with police brutality).
At this point I'm going to ask you to read this confession of a California ex cop. It's about a 20 minute read, but I urge you to read to the end, because it should further illustrate my point on how hierarchy causes so much disdain and give you a good idea of what the people are up against. Go ahead and read, I can wait.
.
.
.
If you've finished reading then hopefully you're now starting to get an idea why we all need to start putting being offended aside and asking ourselves whether our goals are not in fact the same.
Our whole system is built on hierarchy. Some call it patriarchy and blame men, but be aware that by doing so we could be alienating male allies, because women are not free of hierarchical behaviour. In fact blame is a method of making you superior to someone or some groups of people.
We are communal creatures and due to this hierarchy comes into the way we function. If you've ever kept chickens you'll have a fine example of how it works. Small flocks will be the most cohesive with only the occasional in fighting and they function well for the good of them all. However, the larger the flock gets, the more squabbling you'll get and you'll even see the top section isolate off from the main rabble. The matriarch won't even bother herself with the rabble, she'll keep her immediates in line and if a lower hen tries to hassle her, the immediates will deal with it, like bodyguards.
Now imagine this on the volume level that our community has reached. Is it any wonder that we're becoming so disconnected from one another?
While we're never going to escape our hierarchical habits, unlike chickens we have the intelligence to be able to try and recognise when these habits are causing harm. If we can start to recognise this within ourselves, then we might be able to change perpetuating bad cycles that keep us bickering among ourselves, preventing us from making positive moves forward and instead forming into flocks following different methods of trying to achieve the same goal, which we don't in fact reach because we're too busy bickering and trying to change our own little bits around the edges of the core problem.