When my children were very young, I watched the Oprah Winfrey show every afternoon. One day, her show featured a guest named Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher who came up with the well-known, ‘brown-eyes, blue-eyes’ experiment where kids were separated into groups based on a physical characteristic with one group treated with kindness while the other group was treated with contempt.
When we divide people it is like dropping that first domino. Many things happen as a result. One group feels bad and doesn’t understand. The other group begins to feel superior. Actions, based on the lie that one person is better than the other, pick up steam. Before long the lie seems like the truth. We latch onto it because we think it is a way for us to survive. The lies grow. So does the problem.
As a Christian, why would I ever think that God would love one of his children more than another? Why would I think that He would create a color of skin that He didn’t find beautiful? If I believed any of these things on any level what would that say about my understanding of God?
This experiment was able to show her students (and me) the problem on a concrete level. Jane thought to create this experiment when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Children, it seems, are more in-tune with right and wrong. How would they ever understand how people can turn on each other based on a lie? How would her third grade class ever be able to understand that?
On the show that day, the audience was separated by eye color and without their knowledge, they got to to experience what black and brown people in our country experience every day.
This show had a profound affect on my outlook. It helped me to begin the process of identifying my own biases. I needed to begin weeding out my own racist thoughts so that I would not pass them on to my children.
As a way to test myself, I remember wondering if it would bother me if one of my siblings were to marry a person of color. I am ashamed to say that thirty years ago, I had to admit the truth–I would. A thought that I never would have considered, had that show not asked me to question my unconscious beliefs. I felt uncomfortable with myself. Now that I saw myself in reality, I did not like what I saw.
I’d never thought of myself as a racist before, yet this little test didn’t seem to jive with the idea that I held of myself, as believing that all people are children of God.
So I asked myself why. Why would it bother me?
I thought and thought about it and the number one reason was fear. Biracial marriage wasn’t done all that much. What would others think? I was afraid of the controversy. My fear did not come from any one individual black person, it came from the things that I was taught–about a group of people at large (the very definition of racism) that races shouldn’t mix.
So I questioned that thought even further. Why shouldn’t the races mix? And why didn’t it bother me if a Hispanic person and white person married but it would bother me if a black and white person married. I had no answer.
In twelve-step groups we walk in the door and admit to a problem or problems. We let the truth in. Nothing can get better until we can see things as they are. Seeing things as they actually are is the very definition of reality. Until we can accept the truth, recovery will never happen.
It wasn’t long after the show that I got to know a biracial couple. The husband was an black man and guest professor at the college we lived near. He was intelligent, kind, loved his mother, a master gardener, lover of good food, and was attentive and loving to his wife and children. So I thought, ‘why wouldn’t I want this man in my family?’
Knowing this man personally, I realized that, I’d be lucky to have him as a part of my family. I enjoyed our conversations. I felt comfortable and at ease with him. I began to see that there wasn’t a problem with black people. There was a problem with me and my perception of them. I remember that moment so well. It was a shift in my belief system.
I recently learned that the legal definition of insanity is mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.
Reality…or what is real…or the truth is sanity.
I think that it’s time we each examine our idea of truth. Granted, we live in a time where the truth is challenged on a daily basis. But, if you want peace not only in this country but also in your heart, the truth is a really good place to start.
It will be uncomfortable at first. Believe me, I know. But, living with what is real and tangible is simple. It’s the kind of life that feels free. It breaks down barriers.
It won’t be easy. You will have to dig. You will have to consider each day, the privilege that you enjoy if you are a white person in this country. You will need to look for ways to rectify that injustice. Just keep looking for ‘the real’. It will guide you.
It won’t be one and done. I’ve learned with addiction being a family disease, that we are living not only with our current families, we are living with generations past. Like my recovery, I will need to look at myself each day to be sure that I am separating myself from prejudices from my past and have done my part as a child of God to love my neighbor regardless of the color of his skin.
After all, isn’t that all that we were asked to do?