As an extraordinary coach, you must be present to the fact that the people that I’m going to talk about in this blog may be your clients, they may even be you. Suffice it to say, that as everything happens in the mind before it happens in the material world, you are going to love what I’m about to say. Some of the burdens of white people or people who are not black is that they get accused of racism. Whether or not they are racists is beside the point after they get accused because once they are accused, that’s a really, really hard charge to wash off.
Then they walk around feeling defensive because they’ve been criticized for something that they’re just not guilty of. We even have certain effects such as the population that believe if you’re white then you are automatically racist. These things occur in collective behavior but in personal relationships they don’t occur so much. The first point that I want to make is that being a white person, you carry a cross that’s nothing like the cross that I, as a black person, carry. As a black person, I am forced to evaluate the legitimacy of claims of racism. I am forced to deal with other black people who are in my circle of influence talk about racism.
I am often found in huge discussions defending somebody who has been accused of racism by my contemporaries. All racism that is accused is not really racism at all, but once you get in the habit of seeing racism then you see racism everywhere, whether it exists or not. After my blog on faith, I got to thinking about ways that I can apply my faith and instances that I can use my faith that’ll make a difference. If you will remember the blog, I talked about an obstacle that I had overcome, about a level that I had reached, and I did it because I had the faith to go forth as though I would reach that level.
Well, now I’m going to try something new. I’m going to, by faith, declare that that there is no more racism. I will never warn another person about racism. I will never concede that there was an instance of racism because really, it’s really hard to prove. When you say that someone is a racist, you’re saying that their behavior is governed by the skin color of the person that they’re interacting with. In the words of Byron Katie, I have to ask you the first question of inquiry which is, “Do you really know if that’s true?”
The second question of course is, “How could you know if that’s true?” Of course, you couldn’t know that that’s true. Byron Katie goes on a series of questions that really help you understand that it is not what happens to you but your thoughts that’s connected with it that’s causing you pain. So back to my assertion, there is no more racism and as long as I say that there’s no more racism, it is my contention that I will lessen the instances of racism that’ll cross my path. Mind you, it’s a small amount that crosses my path now.
People who choose to have the talk with their children telling them how to behave with white people, how terrible white people are, and I don’t think that white people wanted to talk about folks at all because the truth is, for people that don’t run into black people on a regular basis, they probably never even think about black people. As an extraordinary coach, if you have a black client, make them present to the fact that Victor Irving Jenkins decreed that there’s no more racism. Make them present to the fact that they don’t have to have the conversation with their children about how to deal with racism.
If we continue as we have been, with people warning their children about racism and telling them to look out for somebody of the opposite race, racism will never go away. We must begin to speak it. We must begin to believe it. We must begin to hold it in our hearts that racism is no more. As an extraordinary coach, when you find yourselves governed by something other than the person’s intellectual capability or other than the content of the character, I want you to remind yourself that racism is over. All the talk about the habits of racism and all the talk about their forefathers and their racist nature, all the talk about one political party versus the other one, we’re going to eliminate all of that.
The only chance we have of eliminating all of that is to start speaking it. Start speaking it, particularly those of us who are Christians, who said “I read the Bible,” who attend a faith teaching church. We speak that there’s no more racism and you don’t have to tell that to anybody out loud, you speak that to yourself. You speak that to yourself, you make it part of your prayer time. You just thank God that there’s no more racism. I promise you, your job as an extraordinary coach will become much easier because you won’t have people second guessing who you are because of your race. You won’t be second guessing other people because of their race.
I end this blog like I end all the rest of them but before that, if you have friends that are different color from you, I urge you to turn them on to this blog because whether they are black or whether they are white, they will have an opinion about my assertion that racism is now a thing of the past. Pass this blog onto somebody you care about and until that time, do me a big favor and have yourself a good time.
No comments:
Post a Comment