How 3 Colours can Own All of Them

Growing up, I thought I was immune to racism. After all, I am not able to see the colour(s) everyone goes on about. Red, green, and blue are the ones I am stuck with. I mean, if racism was some kind of playground game, and all I can see is green, I am in the safe zone, right? Well, now I know better and here's the how and why as well as how I approach racism now.

Not jumping to conclusions right when I see a certain skin colour is great. I mean, that still happens to me because extra-terrestrials have green skin, but to me, so do all humans! Racism doesn't stop there, though, because there are so many other dimensions to a green-skinned entity that I can still see and intentionally influence. So for starters, I offer my apologies to those with whom I jumped to the conclusion that I wasn't a racist when I may have been. Further to that, here's how I will stop that moving forward.

First up, give up labels.

It's weird. For the longest time, I have hated labels being applied to me. When I wrote about a colleague in an article I wrote several years ago, I was trying to define the label of 'black' in an uplifting and humane way for me. Black culture is its own definition and while I have long-since been aware of that, I came very close to cultural misappropriation by defining it for them as if they couldn't for themselves. I apologize and I don't mind the world knowing that I have learned that lesson. Black culture aside, labelling a group based on an individual is a stereotype at best.

Second, surrender my coping mechanisms when it comes to understanding people.

This, for me, is the hardest because I rely on coping mechanisms like normal-sighted people do with other colours. Doing this leaves me with far fewer reference points, far fewer indicators, and far more vulnerabilities. To explain this, let me show you the power ignorance has had over me in this regard.

If I only see three colours and everybody falls into one of them, then my initial standpoint when viewing anyone is the same. This means I need to assume many things about them in order to conform to niceties and formalities humans typically expect. To know what those things are, I needed other sources of information. Lines, textures, symbols, cultural references, general history.... Those I could learn, notice, and apply very well, kind of like mini-superpowers.

As it turns out, that is all B.S. I wrote about the undeniability of that even for me with the former colleague who was black yet I incorrectly determined as being Japanese. So it turns out those superpowers may have been kryptonite after all! That leaves me with not knowing and as every adult in the world knows, that drastically increases the risk of slamming you into social brick walls with you committing faux-pas's (violating cultural norms).

But hang on a minute. That's where systemic racism starts.

I don't also allow myself to ask where the other person has entered a society and where they are currently at, how am I not contributing to social racism? Going to schools with few or no students of a different race, culture, country, etc. would do it. Ditto for who lives in the same neighbourhood. Growing up in a not-terrible environment, well, that means others who grew up in other environments, well, I am sure you can, in ten seconds, imagine half a dozen wrong directions for that train of thought to go.

Keeping those in check isn't the goal. It is not engaging in them at all that is the true norm. This leads me to:

the third thing I need to do, recognize.

I need to not be ignorant. This means I also need to know things about the other person I am engaging like:

• what it is like for them to live in the same society
• what their personal and generational histories are
• what challenges they are facing that I am unaware of
• how they define safety and how I do or don't fit in to that definition

Good news. I can find and see those no problem!!! I can do that even though these things change over time, which I acknowledged in this article I wrote that touched on the concept of identifying.

But racism doesn't end with what's inside of me. It's what happens in society. The best way I have to explain it is with one short video - and one very minor detail you may miss.

Watch the short YouTube video by clicking here.

The one detail you may have missed was the woman's partner in that act, the white man at the base of the flagpole who was keeping his hand on the flag pole. Why? Because the security guards had considered using a taser on the metal flag pole as a means to get her down!! (Metal conducts electricity, so if they zapped the pole, the electrical current would zap her as well, knocking her off where gravity could bring her down.) With a white man's hand on the flagpole, they didn't want to tase him as well, so they waited for her to descend.

(You can watch it again if you want by clicking here.)

In short, I need to apply any privilege I have to raise the social bar to that of racial equality.

Unfortunately, I know how to identify that. I have been given colour-coded images that, to me, equate to a blank piece of paper in terms of the information I can obtain from it. Others who raised the social bar in those situations did that for me. That makes it clear to me why and what I need to do for others when it comes to racism. Everyone using privilege to raise the social bar. Imagine.

Finally, I do ask all to not say that 'colour blindness contributes to racism'. It's a knife in my chest and, suffice it to say, I do not appreciate that. Please use another term or phrase, like 'blindness toward colour' or 'being blind to colour'.

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