Racism Is Your Problem; Not Mine

How do you respond when you find out that someone doesn't like you? Without regard to whether it is because of your skin color, eye color, hair color, family connection, job you took from them, husband or wife you took from them, car you drive, house you live in, kids you have or don't have, school you went to, or a million other reasons, does their issue of hatred become yours?

This is what we need to think about when it comes to "racism." Of course, I don't subscribe to "racism" because I don't subscribe to the concept of "race" itself, but even for those who do, you must consider if you are simply reflecting what other people are projecting. People have issues and like I say in the other post about not letting crazy people make you crazy, we can not choose to shoulder the baggage of people who have an improper perspective on life. That would be the case of someone who hates you because of your skin color. They've got it all wrong.

Many years ago when my wife and I were looking to buy a house and after months of deliberation and planning, we were all set to move in. My wife went in to see the realtor to finalize a few things and suddenly, they did not want to sell the house to us. The wife and I had a pretty good idea as to the reason and tired from a prolonged house search, we made one call to them and told them that we were moving on.

Though we did not like what they did, we reasoned that they had issues and that we did not want to be involved with their issues, whether it was "race" or anything else. As the wife and I talked about it, we shook our heads at the hate and moved on, sad that some people could harbor such ill will in their hearts. Happily, within a month we found what was really the house we had wanted from the start. Their "issues" with our "race", if that's what it was, worked out for our good.

I'm sure that I have met quite a few people like that in my lifetime, but the reality for me is that I have never viewed them as "racist." They were flawed human beings, as we all are, and often those people had a few, if not many positive characteristics. They may have done things to harm me, but I was too focused on my objectives to spend time trying to validate their "racism."

Of course, this is not to say that perhaps there are times that you will have to make an active defense against prejudice and bias, but it is simply to say that "racism" is always someone else's ill-conceived ideology and not mine and it shouldn't be yours. However if you fight it as a "race" problem then it is likely to become yours. If today, someone hates you because of your skin color, that is simply their problem. Don't make it yours.