All right, we're gonna start
with an issue that came to a
boiling point last summer.
The social unrest surrounding racism.
As humans, there is a fear of the other.
And as we look at history,
we can see how it especially relates to race.
To discuss this,
I spoke with diversity,
equity and inclusion
consultant Lindsey TH Jackson.
The history of our country
is to normalize fear of self.
Or as we might call it self actualization
as well as fear of others, and so from
the earliest foundations of society,
culture building within America,
we see active campaigns to
normalize fear of other groups,
because if I can normalize fear of others.
Then I can help keep everybody in check
by making other people my problem,
other people.
The reason that I don't have a real
access to self-determination, other people.
The reason that I didn't succeed
in that job and so fear in the
linked to racism is what keeps the
caste system is Isabel Wilkerson,
author and scholar,
has described intact the American caste
system is very much linked to class.
Racism, ableism homophobia,
transphobia and fear is kind of the glue
that keeps everything in place because
the fear drives my belief that longing,
connection,
belonging,
love are all derived from denying parts
of myself to fit in and then in turn,
I must make others.
Wrong must makes others different so
that belonging becomes rooted in not how
I belong because of how we're different,
but how I belong because of
how others are different.
Wow, I mean not take a really deep
look at the reality of what that is.
But there is also the surface matter of
something that's so deeply ingrained in
our society and its sphere of black skin,
deeply woven into our culture.
I recently spoke with a black friend
of mine the other day and he told me
that he was walking on the street in
a town just to the north of us and a
white woman walking with her daughter,
grabbed her kids hand and crossed the
street to avoid walking by my friend.
He's a federal agent. He's protecting people.
This idea that black skin.
Triggers a threat to white women
has proven to be deadly to people,
especially black people.
What is the psychology behind that
and how do we re train or reprogram
what has been so deeply ingrained
over centuries into our culture?
Yeah again. Big topic, no small answer.
One in our Western society we
really teach from a very young age.
This dichotomous thought or this
binary thought this idea that
white is good is pure is virginal,
while things that are black are sinister.
To be feared deviant in some way,
and so we see this not only
for white body children, but.
Everybody we can look in our favorite
children's movies and already start
to see how this idea infiltrates.
When all of sudden,
the character that is doing bad things,
the shade of their skin just
changes ever so slightly.
It's a little darker every time
they come onto the screen.
The night seems to be apparent and present,
and so we start teaching that
at a very young age to normalize
this fear of things that are dark
or black and to celebrate.
And make pure of these things
that are white or white body.
It is unfortunate to think that children
at the earliest moments of their
lives are not already being taught
to accept racism to buy into racism,
to buy into the caste system to
somehow view themselves as either
white bodied or black bodied,
able bodied or disabled gay or
hetero normative. These kind of.
Binary identities, and.
So when we ask ourselves,
should we be teaching children
critical race theory?
Should we be teaching children
about racism and other isms?
The better question is should we
be teaching them to breakdown
the messages that are already
receiving with a critical lens?
I guess there's no easy answer
to working through this fear.
Is it education advocacy I mean where?
Where do we begin?
Even at those young stages,
always always at L THA global.
We're going to say that the work begins.
Here. It begins with unpacking the ways
that you have been spoon fed a system,
a normalization of fear from a
very young age, fear of self,
fear of being different,
fear of breaking out of the norms of our
society and then being able to articulate
in name that if you can learn to celebrate.
Your difference and work across it.
Then you can begin to celebrate
others from there, though,
we begin looking to Co create solutions,
opportunities across difference,
and this is very different from
saying I want to help them over there.
I'm going to go help the Black
Lives Matter movement.
I want to help the LGBTQIA plus movement.
This is about being inauthentic relationship
with difference with communities.
They have a very different lived
experience than my own and that is not
savior ISM work that is about getting
comfortable with being uncomfortable,
which in itself is a revolutionary act.
And
thanks again to Lindsey for helping us go
beneath the surface to find deeper meaning.