Dear White America
If ones perception is ones reality and that perception is different from how others perceive reality, then whose reality is correct? How does one convince another that their perceived reality is wrong and that they are racist, even though they believe they are not? Emotions, primarily fear, play a large role in shaping peoples perception as many people have fear and aversion to epiphany when the epiphany cast them in a negative light and goes against their paradigm of beliefs they felt secure with. Therefore, people can and do often see what they want to see in order to protect their image, thereby creating the separation from reality as perceived by most others. There are plenty examples, mostly born from some sort of substance addiction and denial of addiction or problem, or disorder like anorexia. So we know that denial or distorted reality is a common human disorder.
In order for people to accept reality, they need to first accept some objective metrics or baseline which is not subject to their distorted perception. This does not mean that once they recognize a deviation from the baseline that they will change their perception and or behavior, however. They may simply accept that most others see reality differently from the way they see it and value their self perception more than the external perceptions coming from others. The bottom line, however, is that change in behavior or belief cannot manifest until the self realizes that it has a problem and wants to change, which is hard to do when the belief or behavior manifest in psychological and or physical reward.
What is the psychological or physical reward of racism (R) ? For years, in fact centuries, the reward to white people (WP) has been economical and psychological. The effect of years of R is that it created a caste like economic system based upon R. Slavery and its labor was forced upon black people (BP), which eliminated the burden of such oppression from WP, as was the case in Europe. Post slavery, years of Jim Crow apartheid allocated good opportunities and accommodations to WP allowing them to rise and prosper while BP were held down. The socioeconomic inequality of today is the legacy of that past. Psychologically, WP receives reward to their egos from the perception of being members of a superior R. It kind of like the reward and recognition a player gets from being on a championship team; even if the player rides the bench he or she gets the transference benefit from being part of the group. Many poor WP are always focusing on thee team they are on because their individual states leave much to be desired so they live off the accomplishments of the group to make themselves appear better than others outside the group.
Part of the problem is that often WP are working from a self serving and self created definition of R and hence deny that they are R because their self perception does not meet their personal working definition. Most R erroneously believes that to be R one must harbor negative emotions against a particular group or groups. That was the template set by overt R of the past who contemporary whites use to judge themselves by. They juxtapose their motivations and actions with the motivations and actions of those of the past and conclude that they are different and that difference leads them to conclude that they are not R, because they may or do not harbor hate. What they fail to recognize is that R has always had an emotional and rational component and in the past the emotional component simply stood out more, masking the rational component.
Many WP rationalize that they are not being R, but rather are simply being truthful. In other words, they see a rational, non-emotional reason to see a certain group in a negative light, that's usually backed up by some statistic. Therefore, they deny R as a motivation and instead see themselves the victims of others who are out on a witch hunt to unjustly slander their image so they become defensive. What they don't realize is that their use and conclusions born from the statistics promotes the concept of black inferiority (BI) and or white superiority (WS). The idea or belief in BI or WS is thus a rational conclusion, as they see it, totally void of any emotions, negative or positive. Indeed, most non emotion based R is simply WS, but do not realize it because they have the historical, hate filled, ignorant prototype as the template (i.e. skin heads) for their working definition of a WS. Although they share the same rationalizations of BI and or WS, they see a distinction and hence difference born from not sharing the same emotions.
R's ubiquitously employ a snap shot form of reasoning that allows their prejudgments or social conditioning to fill in the blanks that the snapshot does not provide. They take moments of time, as if they existed void the influence of the action reaction continuum of time, and use those moments in time to conclude Black inferiority (BI) and or white supremacy (WS). For example, they will take the unemployment rate and use it to rationalize their preexisting conditioning or belief that B's are lazy. They will take the rate of births out of wedlock and use it to enforce their preexisting conditioning that B's are irresponsible. They will take the crime and incarcerations rates and use it to rationalize that blacks indeed are a violent people. They will take low test score of B and use it to rationalize a lack of capacity for intelligence. The implied juxtaposition is always with W and if the statistics were the same as W or better, they would not even bring them up because such information does not support the belief of BI and or WS......
See the full article at http://blackintrospection.blogspot.com/
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