Anti-Racism, Oppression, Division

Making Everything Into Racism Nurtures Racism

When we make everything racism, real racism goes unaddressed

The people in leadership who are racist — the ones that nurture and care for the systemic racism that has controlled our lexicon and belief systems for centuries — they want us to assign the label of ‘racism’ to as many people, situations, and things as possible.

This way, we are so distracted fighting over what and who is racist and what and who isn’t, that we have no energy left to make real change or address the underlying causes of our dysfunction.

They want us to get so wrapped up in the symptoms of the problem that we treat the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

Most importantly, they want us to blame each other, further dividing us, which is their greatest weapon.

You see, the best and most skilled oppressor does not actually do the work of oppressing the people. They simply create an environment — a culture of people who oppress each other, and ultimately themselves.

There are simply too many of us and too few of them. If we united, we would be unstoppable. But we are stoppable.

We are stoppable, because we are distracted and fragmented.

We are stoppable because the majority of us choose a mainstream narrative and follow it. Allowing propaganda to control our minds, and therefore our lives, we cling to these fallacies for dear life. Our fellow humans are trampled below the stomping feet of whatever agenda we have allowed to overtake us. We fall pray to the phenomenon of group-think in our desire for harmony. We are divided from the rest of the world.

We are stoppable because our energy is drained. Being pulled in a thousand directions by everything going on in the world and our own lives, we are fragmented. There are bits of us floating here and there, but all of us is nowhere.

Many people don’t do their own research, and to anyone who does — this is quite obvious. Beliefs are chosen, by many, based upon summarized perspectives of others—via articles, videos and status updates. When we use the perspectives of others to define our own beliefs, without doing our own research, we are not thinking for ourselves.

Why do we do this? Because we are fragmented. Many of us barely have enough of ourselves left, at the end of the day, to keep our own lives and houses in order. This leaves no time or energy for real research, fact checking and heart checking.

We allow others to think for us because we are fragmented and we are fragmented because we allow others to think for us. Inside this insidious maze we are divided and distracted.

If we wish to truly heal racism, we must stop making everything into racism.

The people in power, who would be subdued by the healing of systemic racism, want us to make everything into racism. As long as we are distracted by the things that don’t matter, we cannot see the things that really matter. Focusing on and obsessing over surface issues and symptoms of the problem, we are unable to heal the deep wounds that have truly torn us apart. We are divided.

Bandaids don’t heal wounds. They only cover them up. It is time we stop covering the world with bandaids. If we do not, nothing will truly change. We will think things are changing. But like the child thinks their bandaid is a magical healer of wounds, we will mistake our societal bandaids as much needed change.

Underneath all those bandaids, our collective wounds will go unhealed. We may make some surface changes that make us feel better, like we are making progress. However, the same wounds we spent so much energy covering up, will manifest in new ways, just like they always have.

Written by Holly Kellums

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