Stop Saying “I am not racist” Because When You Say It You Still Are!
The Significance of Decluttering Inside and Out — Permanently!
The changes I am making to my own life in the New Age #P.C. (Post Corona) are manifold. Seizing the chance to implement what I feel is necessary in order to turn the current crisis into something positive, inevitably means decluttering my world and simplifying what had become an ever-growing swamp of useless STUFF. Things from the past, gadgets, gifts, technical and non-technical equipment, as well as purchases driven by impulse — or possibly compulsion? The latter, above all, are the ones which have triggered a high-pitched inner voice screaming at me repeatedly from within: “Get rid of it!”
I could hear that voice before coronavirus, but I could not let go of STUFF!
I have moved house so many times throughout my life that I am unable to keep track of all the flats and houses I have lived in without doing some serious thinking. Not only did I press the reset button on where I lived, but also on the things I owned. Each and every time I moved house, I deliberately rid myself of unnecessary baggage. However, a few years down the line, I would always be back at the doubtful skill of filling up a medium-sized removal van once again.
I am not as bad as a compulsive hoarder, but I love surrounding myself with nice stuff, preferably new, preferably of shiny materials, preferably with cute eyes looking at you, all the while keeping certain memorabilia and moving it around with me to all new locations. I am sure that self-isolating and social distancing measures have the exact same effect on many other people. I do not believe for a second that I am anything special regarding my likes for collecting things that either remind me of locations, people, or nice moments.
I can vividly picture people tackling their basements, shelves, cupboards, garages and I have heard many people around me talking to neighbours and acquaintances about engaging in this activity. It is a very logical thing to do when you have lots of time at hand whilst staying inside of your home a great deal of it.
The only difference between myself and all the other newly-crowned champions in the discipline called “clearing out” might actually be that in this New Age #P.C. my personal aim is to apply this technique not only to STUFF, but also to concepts that do not work for me anymore. I would like to inspire more people to follow my example.
Mission Impossible, or new Rule of Thumb?
Decluttering is on the agenda, and in order to do so, the first question I have to ask myself is “why do I think and function the way I do?” No matter how much income I had, I was always able to accumulate STUFF! No matter how much I got rid of, I was never able to resist replacing it for long! Even whilst working a lot, my favourite pastime would still be to make improvements to my home by adding more contents to it. I felt I had to surround myself with things to make my life at home somehow nicer. Now I can see how that distracted me from more important ways of feeling good about my home and myself.
But what is the real purpose of keeping STUFF?
Sometimes things break, or they stop working, thus have to be replaced. Those are not the problem. The commodities of life will keep their place in mine. Neither do I wish to live without a kettle, nor without a coffee maker, as I drink both tea and coffee, which is why I will keep buying new ones if these should fail to work. To me these two gadgets serve as examples for why some things have to stay!
Back to the above question of whether it could be the impact of Nature obliging me to play the ancient role of the gatherer. It is possibly the case, let us not dispute that as part of the answer. However, as a human being capable of controlling my own actions in accordance with my bank account statements, I suspect that the problem is rooted elsewhere, nevertheless.
Nature might explain the urge to buy the kettle and the coffee maker, but not actually why I would buy that cute little figurine from an island I visited years ago. In this case the purpose was to keep a memory of that particular holiday by the sea. However, it does not explain why one would keep that ugly one, in my case one in the shape of a glass toad given to me by a relative, also many years ago. In your case, reader, it may well be a ceramic angel, a teddy bear, or an ornament to display in the window, or nothing of that sort?
The explanation as to why we keep these things even though we might not even like them may well be the appreciation we feel towards and the memory we want to keep of the relatives who gave them to us.
However, the motivation behind this behaviour could also be fear! Fear of being accused of disrespect towards my relative, which causes in me a certain impulse to keep the glass toad. Just in case my aunt should come to visit my house, I could then prove to her how much I appreciate her gifts (and her) by pointing to the toad saying: “Look auntie, whenever I look at that nice toad you gave me, I think of you!” And she would feel all great about having a niece who appreciated her so much, which is what I would like her to, being the nice niece I want to be. Hence, this ugly little creature has been sitting on a glass shelve in my living-room ever since I got it.
What do the Words “Racist” and “Xenophobic” have to do with all this?
The analogy with the toad may not be working one hundred percent, but I would like to use it to show how we can all do something in order to stop the following: Fear covering up honesty like a veil!
If we can manage to recognise when fear is the root of a problem, fear within us, then we can do something about the wrongdoing this fear is covering up. Fear of failing or offending someone makes it impossible to stick to the truth and tell that person that you don’t like their gift. You resort to a little lie (“What a nice glass toad!”) not actually to protect their interests over your own, but to hide from your own fear, which is an act of cowardice at best.
Most people would probably argue that there is no harm in not depreciating a gift this way, because we were all educated to be nice to others, especially to our relatives.
But when more than that is at stake, for example when we are talking about how racism affects people’s lives, the fact of the matter stops being harmless, and starts to be harmful. This is why we have to stop hiding behind our fears!
What if, instead of saying “I am not racist” we said “I am not xenophobic”?
“Why should we do this”, you may ask? Is it not the same thing wrapped up in another word? No, it is not!
Why saying “I am not racist” is still racist.
By claiming “I am not racist!” one is actually expressing a fear of being accused of having such an attitude. Sadly enough, the very act of using this word is the first step towards being and thinking like a racist, because of the connotation it produces in us and in others. People say “I am not racist” to cover up the fear of being taken for one, but, if you were truly not racist, you would not have to say so. In my eyes, it is the fear of offending any black person with the possibility of being racist, because you are white, that makes white people say it.
Now let’s change the word “racist” into the word “xenophobic”!
“I am not xenophobic!” would mean that I do not feel any fear of others, hence no connotation of race or colour would be brought up!
In other words, the term racist inevitably suggests that there are differences of race between people involved, which are based on their individual ethnic backgrounds. The term alone already makes sure that the differences keep having an impact - in the worst of all cases, not just in people’s heads, but in their lives!
If you were to imagine ME as a human being after hearing someone refer to me using the term “Caucasian race” or “white“ person, you would always imagine me as having white skin, but at the same time it would make it absolutely impossible for your brain to imagine me as a person with a dark tone of skin, or a red one, or a yellow one! Unless you were taught from the beginning that “Caucasian” equals “red skin”, etc.! But you have not been told that it is this way, so you can skip this train of thought entirely, and that is exactly the point I am trying to make.
The act of using the above terms triggers pictures and connotations in people’s heads. When the term “race” or “racist” or “white” or “black” is used, we sort and filter the world and the people we encounter into these categories. Not only is it not helpful to point out that a black person is black, or that a white person is white, because it states the obvious, but it makes us highlight the fact that the difference could somehow matter, or at the very least, used to matter in the past! In any case, it draws a line between people of different coloured skin, a line that is no longer useful and should be retired, decluttered for good.
Decluttering our world means that we have to stop highlighting such distinctions! — Get rid of the language that does so!
In Linguistics as a scientific discipline, it is not new that language and words activate filters through which we see the world. This is where the so-called Affective Filter theory can help us to some understanding of what these utterances produce in us. The Affective Filter hypothesis became well-known in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics as part of the Second Language Acquisition Theory in the work of the American Linguist Stephen D. Krashen in the 1970s and 1980s . Krashen further develops the concept of the Affective Filter as first described by Dulay and Burt (1977) in his work. He states that a high “affective filter” can be made accountable for individuals in second language acquisition not to be able to approximate their language competences to that of native speakers of the language despite having the input available at all times whilst living in a country where the target language is spoken. This means that what is preventing them from doing so is not the input itself, but the anxiety that accompanies the process of learning the language.
The affective filter in the context of the topic of this text also has to be imagined as anxiety not letting us move on to a better understanding of each other. All our memories have gathered in our brain from past experiences and they have been shaped from the moment we come to this world until we leave it again.
Without thinking consciously about it, when we talk about “not being racist“ we classify and sort people into the categories linked to the history of what it means to be racist, albeit at the exact same moment we want to get rid of these differences because we do NOT want to be taken for racist person. How is this predicament to be solved?
Pictures we have stored mentally in our earliest past may not be erased easily. Why store them in the first place? No one person is exactly the same as any other person, not even identical twins turn out to be identical in real life! Why go on pointing out the obvious, i.e. that there are differences between the races by saying that one “is not racist”?
If the sorting and categorizing is entirely done by our brains, we need to feed the mechanisms and filters the brains adhere to appropriately. Primeval brains are still part of our modern brains. Dangers and threats from encounters with others have to be recognised within split-seconds by this ancient part of our brains. The ability to do so has made it possible for mankind to succeed and not be extinct.
We are trying to get rid of the problem that distinguishing between races poses by highlighting the fact that different races exist, thus creating „racism“ as a concept in people’s minds .
On the one hand, when ethnicity is linked to the notion that it brings with it a certain code of conduct, or set of morals, or traditions, or beliefs, or any other differences adding to the differentness to be found in one another, this adds to the creation of problems, as history and recent events keep proving.
On the other hand, the constructs „racism“ and “race” fail to describe adequately what happens when people of the same racial origins, but with different nationalities, or different moralities treat each other without respect.
Why talking about “Xenophobia” can help to combat “Racism”.
Xenophobia means “fearing strangers” and describes very adequately what we are basically dealing with when we act out racism in some way or another: FEAR.
Think about the implications this assumption opens up!
If an individual is “accused” of being “fearful of strangers”, instead of being “racist”, a dialogue bubble can open up that allows this individual to explain the way he or she feels without directly attacking someone else, or disrespecting the other person right from the start. This individual can talk about his or her fears rather than about the person that caused this fear in them. The point is that THE FEAR itself is the problem!
I assume that people in general will not be able to acquire the competence of getting in touch or even recognising their feelings of “xenophobia” without a certain amount of training. They would have to dig deep down and be very brave to admit that they feel this fear, but if they do not recognise it, they will not be able to get rid of it!
My suggestion is therefore that everyone take a look at their own life and their way of thinking. Have you ever had any thoughts that are commonly classed as “racist”? Think back at this particular situation and dig a little deeper:
Was FEAR of any kind involved?
My guess is that fear is ALWAYS involved, because you can only ever act out your own thoughts, feelings, assumptions, and never those of others! Which means that, as soon as you start recognising your fears, you can start combatting them, and empowering yourself to live life without them — even the sad and racist-xenophobic thoughts and convictions that you may have been harboring secretly, or unknowingly — permanently!
I am not saying that this is the answer to the whole problematics and scope of racism, but I am saying that it is a start for people who genuinely do not want to be associated with having racist attitudes, and effectively start contributing to problem-solving somehow.
My thoughts on 1 June 1 #P.C.
Sue
