2020-06-09

Where do we even begin? With ourselves.

A man was murdered and the world cried out. Then came the unrest, the riots, the violence, the end of the fuse lit by more than 400 years of consecutive, systemic racism and oppression. I am a white man and I have no idea what to do now.

The last few weeks have made it abundantly clear, even to the silent majority, that the system is broken (if you can’t see it now, it’s because you don’t want to and there is no hope for you). It was created and is set-up to ensure that minorities in general, and black Americans in particular remain second class citizens at best. It has to stop. It has to change. But how? Where do we start? Who is “we”? Who are “they”? The questions abound and I don’t have the answers. I am in despair, for the land I once called home.

It is easy to say “we weren’t raised to be racist” or “we all just got along growing up”. For the most part, that was true for us and it warms my heart to be able to say it. But that doesn’t change society. It doesn’t fix the system. We are the system. It isn’t some ethereal force controlling us. We are it and we are all racists. We are all sexists. We all have prejudices. We are all accountable.

And please, don’t think “but I’m not racist, I have black friends” or whatever other platitudes are popping into your head. They are weak excuses to avoid having to work, nothing more.

We didn’t end up here because we aren’t racists.

We all can change
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said “the crowd is of our own creation…”. We are society and we have to realize that we all must take our own first steps towards change. That’s how you change society. Change starts with each one of us at home. It starts with ourselves. It starts with the realization that we must now break the hold racism and prejudices have on our society – on us. Do something; do anything you can think of. Then teach your kids that everyone truly is created equal, and then see where they take you (they usually know what to do next in the really simple stuff).

This is not an indictment
Stoicism is really a great philosophy with strong ideas that help put a handle on a lot of what the world is throwing at everyone. One of those is the notion that nothing that is outside your own control is good or bad. It simply is. Another is that we all have emotional impulses that are part of being alive. They are there and in their core cannot be controlled. But we can control how we react to them and what we do with those impulses.

Prejudices fall in that category. They are there. We all feel them, every day. But what we do with them defines whether we are good or evil. If that means breaking with your behavior up until this point, then start small and work your way up. Day-by-day.

Dare I say, that if we all practice we could, one day, make society perfect?