Cowboys and Indians, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

     A dear friend and soul brother asked on Facebook yesterday, "Is it ok to have love in my heart for everyone...even those who have hurt me and my people the most?"  He is Native American and he was speaking about "white people" or who I call European Americans.  He asked for our thoughts.  Racism is a complex issue.  I was really quite stunned when reading Native American literature how an author shared growing up, watching the Cowboy and Indian movies, he always cheered for the good guys, the cowboys.  How complex is that?  

     This is what I posted - My perspective: our spiritual community has focused too much on Sacred words saying to forgive instantly, and not a balanced focus on "they do not allow themselves to be objects of cruelty and transgression."  These two truths do not conflict. A simple way of putting it that helps me is - Hurt me once, shame on you.  Hurt me twice, shame on me.  Our Faith also tells us Racism is our Most Vital and Challenging issue, yet we don't invest our time and energy on healing racism within our community because the dominant  culture dominates.  That is my perspective.  Gunalcheesh/thank you for giving us the chance to discuss this issue. My heart is with you....always.

     This morning I wanted to continue to write on this topic.  It's a complex one.  Racism.  1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and the racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, Merriam-Webster dictionary app.  We need to look at the facts, humans have been anatomically humans for 200,000 years.  In the last 500 years, humankind has been becoming one global community, I mark it with the arrival of Christopher Columbus.  In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was made into law in the USA, not yet 50 years ago, which protects the right to vote, to provide legal relief against discrimination, to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, etc... We have lead the world in battling Racism, South Africa ended Apartheid in the 1990's.  

     In 2013, in America Racism is alive and a cancer that handicaps our nation.  Statistics do not lie.  It is more likely for a young African American male to go to jail than to college.  Only 1 of 9,000 Native American high school students will complete a Masters degree.  The inherited prejudice and racism is still in our schools and our court systems.  If all of our citizens are not supported to be successful in school and advance to college, our whole Nation suffers and the inequities will continue.

     I laugh when I hear the argument that there is no longer a need for affirmative action.  Children applying to the University of Washington, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, University of Michigan all have equal opportunity.  I went to schools in urban areas and on the Reservation.  Now I can't tell you first hand, but I assume my education is not equal to the students whose families could afford private school tuition at $20,000 a year, from kindergartner to 12 grade.  Can I compete equally with those students?  Is there any chance in hell I would rank higher than these student in qualifications?  So does that mean, my community will not have professionals who are actually from our communities?  Because other kids are more qualified than Native students are?

     There are national issues about Racism, community based issues, and personal issues.  In my life Racism effects me everyday.  Because I live in an area where indigenous people are a minority, there are still grievances from the not too distant past between local communities, about who has Fishing Rights in the 70's just 40 years ago, who stole the beachfront property of the Tribe and sold it as vacation homes in 1937, the US government burning down the Longhouse in 1870.  When you are a person of color, you are always on your guard for acts of prejudice and racism.  Life experience teaches you to be suspicious.  

     Now I was raised with the belief that humankind is one family.  My Grandma was a supporter of healing racism.  She taught me from what Abdu'l-Baha shared, "...the various races of humankind lend a composite harmony and beauty of color to the whole.  Let all associate, therefore, in this great human garden even as flowers grow and blend together side by side without discord or disagreement between them."  She taught me her personal theory, Racism exists because we don't know each other.  So make friends with "white people".  Spend time with them.  Invite them to your home and have dinner.

     Abdu'l-Baha's grandson, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahai Faith, wrote in 1938, words that inspire me 70 years later - 

"Let the white make a supreme effort in their resolve to contribute their share to the solution of this problem, to abandon once for all their usually inherent and at times subconscious sense of superiority, to correct their tendency towards revealing a patronizing attitude towards the members of the other race, to persuade them through their intimate, spontaneous and informal association with them of the genuineness of their friendship and the sincerity of their intentions, and to master their impatience of any lack of responsiveness on the part of a people who have received, for so long a period, such grievous and slow-healing wounds. Let the Negroes, through a corresponding effort on their part, show by every means in their power the warmth of their response, their readiness to forget the past, and their ability to wipe out every trace of suspicion that may still linger in their hearts and minds."

     

     No one has mastered this skill.  It will take future generations to fully heal historic trauma and the cancer of Racism.  But we can do our part today.  I can do my part today.  My side of the fence is to show within my power my warmth, my readiness to forgive the past, and to strive to wipe out every trace of suspicion.  And I am true to my Grandma's wisdom some of my best friends are European American.  I try to share with them my reality, that racism and White Privilege effect me on a daily basis.  But I try to forgive the past, as long as it is not repeated.  And I will speak up when I see Racism and prejudice today.  Especially within my spiritual community.  

Challenge: think about how Racism affects you.  We all suffer from the consequences.  What is your side of the fence from the advice of Shoghi Effendi?  Can you see how it could help heal racism in your heart?  Is there a particular relationship in your life that has issues with racism?  Could you apply this knowledge to it?

The following is the rest of the paragraph of Shoghi Effendi's advice and I feel it's great additional reading.

http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/

Let neither think that the solution of so vast a problem is a matter that exclusively concerns the other. Let neither think that such a problem can either easily or immediately be resolved. Let neither think that they can wait confidently for the solution of this problem until the initiative has been taken, and the favorable circumstances created, by agencies that stand outside the orbit of their Faith. Let neither think that anything short of genuine love, extreme patience, true humility, consummate tact, sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort, can succeed in blotting out the stain which this patent evil has left on the fair name of their common country. Let them rather believe, and be firmly convinced, 41 that on their mutual understanding, their amity, and sustained cooperation, must depend, more than on any other force or organization operating outside the circle of their Faith, the deflection of that dangerous course so greatly feared by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and the materialization of the hopes He cherished for their joint contribution to the fulfillment of that country’s glorious destiny.