Skin Is not a uniform.
It doesn’t tell anyone what he or she believes in. Skin color just help identify the family – the group — the person belongs to.
People are confused about this.
We feel comfortable with family. That’s what we are used to. It’s the group we were born into.
Just because someone is white doesn’t mean they are prejudiced against blacks. And vice versa. As rational beings, we have the ability to reason.
We can see beyond stereotypes.
Here is what I think is going on.
Color is not about racism. It’s about fear.
Stress and social unrest bring out the worst in others and block our powers of reason. Fear causes us to separate into like-colored groups. We huddle in groups similar to the ones we were born into.
I learned this one day while sitting on a bench at the aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. I was supervising students on a field trip and I took time to sit on a bench for a few minutes and watch the fish.
Fish in an aquarium are mesmerizing. I was focusing on how the orange ones mix with the yellow ones and the blues ones mix with the others. It was a beautiful display of homogeneous color.
But then a surprising thing happened. A disturbance occurred at the surface of the tank because an attendant touched the water.
Instantly, the fish sought out each other based on color. All the yellows immediately located other yellows. Likewise, the orange fish found their herd. The blues theirs. No more was there a homogeneous mixture. The different colors of fish had all schooled up.
I was amazed at how quickly that had happened. How had they even signaled each other so efficiently, I wondered. One moment the colors were all mixed and the other they were separated out. Was the schooling based on color or some other trait? That was a study for another day.
No matter the scientific reason behind it, this explains racism, I thought to myself. It isn’t about hatred of the other group. It’s about fear and the need to be safe. We don’t hate each other. We are willing to mingle. But, if something startles or frightens us, we regroup. It’s just an instinct to school up for protection. We are just finding the other members of our tribe and seeking safety.
I was excited about what I had observed. I immediately tried to explain my idea to my students, who didn’t really seem to understand my excitement.
I realized it was a little difficult to put what I had noticed into words.
How does this apply to human behavior? Take any issue. Do we naturally separate out on skin color? No. We usually have a reason for taking one side or the other. In other words, we use our intellect and reasoning powers to decide on an issue.
Each of us has our opinions on any particular issue. We even have debates. But it doesn’t mean we change our skin color depending on the issues we feel strongly about. Likewise, we naturally change our minds about some things as we get older. Does this mean we change the color of our skin? Of course not.
But if the tank’s disturbed, we might “school up” based on color because that is where we were born, where we feel most comfortable. It’s our village. Those are our people. Being with others of our group makes us feel safe. It’s what we know.
Our first instinct when frightened is to seek the safety of the group. After that, we may use reason to think about the thing that frightened us.
If something frightens us, we huddle together.
It’s not racism that separates us. It’s fear.
Once I realized fear was behind feelings of racism, I tried to use this knowledge in my everyday life. I tend to have a calming effect on people anyway. I let people reason things through and come to their own conclusions. This works well with my students as well as friends and family. People don’t always agree with me. I like to present facts, but It’s ok to disagree with me.
I have faith that reason will prevail as long as no one disturbs the tank.
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