Happiness 1st Institute Programs

Creating Racism: Are you?

There are two ways parents create racism in the world.

1. Teach their children to be racist against those who seem different, and
2. Teach their children that others’ actions toward them are motivated by racism.

The first way is generally recognized, discussed, and recognized by many as wrong. The second one is ignored. Increasing awareness of the second way racism is created is the purpose of this article. Although the intention, in the 2nd way, is not to harm the child’ life experience–that is often the outcome.

How we perceive reality is an individual experience. The way I perceive any given situation or event will not be identical to the way anyone else perceives it.

If I look at an event where no harm was intended and perceive it as emotionally harmful, I am creating the harm.

If someone with no intention of racism, with no attitude of being less that good to others, does something or says something that another person  (or a group) perceives the actions to be racist—the racism is their own creation. What typically happens is they then blame the individual or group they perceived as being racist for their perspective of the situation.

What they don’t want, and don’t realize they are doing, is creating racism. When we sent our children out into the world, if we tell them people are against us for some reason we have no control over (such as our race), we put them at a disadvantage before they even leave home. There have been situations in my life I could have easily interpreted as being the result of racism against me and other times I could have perceived as belittling to my gender, but I chalked them up to things like

• The person was just having a bad day and treating everyone like that, or
• They were unaware and did not intend harm, or
• Other perspectives that gave them the benefit of the doubt.

You see, if I perceive something another does as harmful to me, it is. Their intentions do not matter. However, it is not the other person who is creating the harm—it is my perception of their words or deeds. If I perceive that someone is intentionally attempting to harm me, I create for myself, a world that is far less kind, far less favorable to positive growth, than if I give other the benefit of the doubt.

It is possible to give our children a racist world when that is not what the actual world has become. When we prime them to expect to be treated that way—we are diminishing their lives. We are giving them the opposite of what we want for them. 

I think the scale has tipped. I won’t deny that there are still racist individuals in the world. But, I think far more racism is created in the minds of the perceivers—resulting in disempowered perspectives (or stemming from, to be more precise). What reality exists outside your door? Does it serve your highest good?

When an individual perceives racism, whether it was there or not, the individual experiences racism. This perspective creates within the individual a very bad emotional response. New research, described in my book, TRUE Perspectives—Optimum Health: Remember Galileo, and research published in Global Advances in Health and Medicine demonstrates that our emotions are sensory feedback. One of the largest problems our society has is that we have been taught to misinterpret the appropriate response to emotions that feel bad.

A bad feeling emotion does not mean the thought that preceded it is true. The bad feeling emotion is your emotional feedback system telling you that your thinking is going away from self-realization and that you might want to re-think the thought that is creating the bad-feeling emotion. 

This new science has the potential to bring peace to Earth and end the divisiveness that occurs when we create divisions between one another with artificially constructed labels, such as race and borders.

We are people. At the deepest level we all want the same three things: To love and be loved, and a better world for the future. Our differences are only about which path we believe will achieve that desire. Let’s begin connecting on the deeper level—let’s create a better world, for all.

If you would like to learn more about how our brain interprets reality based on our personal beliefs rather than an absolute reality, please take a look at our course offerings.