Are we all racists?(2 min read)

Racism is not natural or innate – It is learned. So it can definitely be overcome with some effort on the individuals part.

Are you aware of the terms – sympathy, apathy, antipathy? These come naturally to humans

In general, we humans place ourselves first. Our innate immune response of self-protection seems to be on the frontline of all behavior. #self-before-all if you will.

This also implies that we humans have a general apathy towards ‘others’. We will define and redefine others as we move along. #dont-care-for-the-others-zone

Next we are sympathetic to those who you identify with. If we can find a sense of belonging with a person or group of individuals, we tend to sympathize with them. #our-sympathy-zone

By nature, we’re not born with any seeds of antipathy. Those seeds are sown by those around us. A child is born to love every color and not differentiate in any manner. Racism is learnt behavior. Its a form of prejudice that an individual harbors as a result of broad, baseless, untested, blindly accepted generalizations.

If you feel any form of prejudice towards any person or group, first introspect for your lack of awareness, your insecurities and feels of inadequacy.

An visual exercise , see your self sitting next to a candle in a huge dark room. Corners of the room further away from you are incompletely or not lit at all. You know what you see and you steer of the darkness cause you do not know what is there. You are afraid of venturing into that space as you ‘do not know’. That feeling of not knowing triggers your flight response – you are mistrustful of what you do not know.

Now if there are more people like you in that same space, you find them in your ‘sympathy zone’. Herd mentality kicks in, you think and believe what they might. You are far more prone to embracing prejudice. Now its very likely for you to behave in ways that ‘you’ as an individual would not have before.

Think about this? Is this why racism exists in many parts of the world? It seems we need to be more aware and together we can eliminate this nasty behavior.