HOW MUCH EMOTIONAL STAMINA DO YOU POSSESS?

In 2019, during Mr. Trump's first Administration, a "biracial" woman named Ijeoma Oluo published a remarkable book on race entitled, "So you want to talk about race." She states in the introduction that her intention with her writing is to inspire readers to begin thinking.

On pages 24 and 25, a discussion with a white-bodied friend is related. Oluo is seeking to process an online experience with a white co-worker. The argument, which developed under a social media post, centered the co-worker's assertion that poor people on welfare needed to prove their worthiness for financial assistance by taking drug-tests. The idea of potentially sterilizing poor women so that they did not have more babies with the expectation that tax-payers finance their sex-drive also came up. Oluo, of course, was offended and explained how both ideas expressed by the co-worker were steeped in eugenics.

Her explanation fell on deaf ears, both online and in person. Both the co-worker and the friend disagreed with Oluo.

When Oluo explained that the subject matter was not one that fell into the "let's agree to disagree" category - that HARM was inherent in said ideas; that they were racist, because of how those ideas play out in our society - the co-worker expressed regret and immediately demanded Oluo accept that their INTENTION was not to offend, but simply to offer an alternative perspective in the discussion. When Oluo did not give the co-worker the benefit of the doubt, the co-worker told Oluo she needed to be "less angry."

The friend listening in-person to Oluo process this online exchange through a racial lens took offense to the co-worker's argument and defensiveness as racism. The friend begged Oluo to only classify racism as what Nazis did or violent acts or cross-burning and lynching, otherwise, Oluo was going to turn white people off by calling any disagreement with a Black person during a discussion racism.

On page 28, Oluo explains how she choose to retreat within herself and decide, for her own inner peace and safety, that she could never process her racial stress with this white friend again. Why? This friend lacked the inner fortitude to view themselves, and other white bodied persons, as immersed into a racist society.

"The truth is, you don't have to 'be racist' to be a part of the racist system." (page 29, Oluo)

Why are you bringing this up, Royal Star? Because it is this ELEMENT of anti-racism/pro-humanity work that I observe overwhelms the average white bodied person. Intellectually, it is easy to look at the current events of injustice that are being recorded over cellphones and documented as news headlines - and acknowledge they are happening. You and I may not know how to stop them, b.u.t. at the very least, we can choose to not deny them. Emotionally, it is easy to have an inner reaction; to become frustrated that those who are perpetrating racism still exist in our society and appear to be putting up supreme resistance to our collective request that they change their behavior. What is more difficult is the acceptance that for simply living in a white body, the individual personality is an active participant in racism. That being alive, existence alone, gives you, in your white body, a race.

Photo by Aidan Roof: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-looking-at-broken-glass-4071373/

Racism is not a mind set.

Racism is not bullying.

Racism is not hatred.

Racism is not an ideology.

Racism is not a religion.

Racism is not consensual.

Racism is a social system designed in the 1600s to justify the enslavement of Black bodies and genocide of Indigenous people to those who were full participants in a military invasion.

Racism is psychopathy. It permitted an English person to transform themselves into a monster, who could not experience African or Indigenous persons as the English experienced themselves. Africans became talking farm animals. The Indigenous became vermin that needed to be exterminated.

Racism is oppressive acts not being perceived as oppressive acts in the mind of those who occupy the oppressor caste because they purposely developed the capacity to not view their behavior as inherently oppressive towards non-beings (non-humans.)

The online discussion that Oluo had with her co-worker was not a "logical/objective" discussion about the efficient usage of taxpayer monies towards alleviating poverty through welfare. No. It was the equivalent of a slave master named George Washington comparing with another slave master named Thomas Jefferson how much money they planned to spend maintaining the physical welfare of their chattel slaves. It is this connection to systemic oppression that is so shocking to the individual personality living inside of a white body.

From what I can observe, when the individual personality living inside of a white body discovers for themselves that they are trapped by the behavior of every other personality living in a white body - by how Black, Brown and Indigenous people are treated - it, that experience.