I know I haven't written in 4 years, but this is important. I know I've dedicated this Blog to therapeutic insights I have learned. Well, this is about my own personal growth in our culture. Let me start by saying that I am not going to talk about whether rioting or looting or any recent events are right are wrong. They are here. We need to understand them. Please bear with me....
I heard on a report that George Floyd called for his "Mama" at some point in his torture. His brother said something to the effect that Black Men do not call for their Mama unless they fear they are dying. I have seen that in the medical world and believe it to be true. I have heard it echoed by Black men and women on the news. Calling for "Mama" means something deeply frightening in this culture, possibly more so than in my culture.
Carl Jung spoke of the "Collective Unconscious" to which we are all connected. I like that concept, unprovable as more than a metaphor, but useful. He felt it was the root of the parallels in myths all over the world. It is how good people tend to find each other and, unfortunately, evil-doers tend to flock to each other. It is why we cry when we see sad movies and when we see children hurt on the playground. It is why we gasped when we first saw the video of the killing of George Floyd. The Collective Unconscious also has a "Shadow" or Dark Side, according to Jung's writings. It holds the unresolved ills of all consciousness. It transfers the "sins of the parents" to the children to be dealt with. It is both why most Americans in my generation grew up with a relatively neutral image of the horrors of slavery, glorified in "Dixie" and why some still struggle to keep those horrors "in the past" or buried in the unconscious. Fortunately, the Collective Unconscious is what prods us to have empathy and to forgive. For too long, this balance has rendered our culture silent, but that silence has been broken and may not be silenced again.
Carl Jung spoke of the "Collective Unconscious" to which we are all connected. I like that concept, unprovable as more than a metaphor, but useful. He felt it was the root of the parallels in myths all over the world. It is how good people tend to find each other and, unfortunately, evil-doers tend to flock to each other. It is why we cry when we see sad movies and when we see children hurt on the playground. It is why we gasped when we first saw the video of the killing of George Floyd. The Collective Unconscious also has a "Shadow" or Dark Side, according to Jung's writings. It holds the unresolved ills of all consciousness. It transfers the "sins of the parents" to the children to be dealt with. It is both why most Americans in my generation grew up with a relatively neutral image of the horrors of slavery, glorified in "Dixie" and why some still struggle to keep those horrors "in the past" or buried in the unconscious. Fortunately, the Collective Unconscious is what prods us to have empathy and to forgive. For too long, this balance has rendered our culture silent, but that silence has been broken and may not be silenced again.
I was reminded of a talk I went to in the early 90's given by Dr. Marilyn Mason about her experience studying the family dynamics in the Serengeti in Africa. They are a tribal culture where all are family. They all care for all the children, the sick and the elderly. I remember her commenting that toddlers play near the fire pits and mothers do not panic because there is always an adult within arm's length, plus, the children learn early that it is not safe, not only because they know they can get burned, but because they know where they are safe and they stay there. She was talking, also, about cultural shame. She mentioned that African slavess were "ripped" out of their culture and lost their roots, replacing them with shame. Sons were taken from their parents. Husbands from their wives and children. Fathers from their children. Community members from their community.
The rage that fuels the riots we are watching now is a cultural rage that began when healthy young men, probably teens and young adults were hunted down by strange looking foreigners who spoke an incomprehensible language. They were chained and shoved into the foul conditions in the bottoms of boats, probably having been beaten into silence. Sailing to the Caribbean or the U.S. in those days was long and hard and they were in inhuman conditions, being treated like animals being taken to slaughter. They were hungry, thirsty, tired, confused, and lost, living in unsanitary conditions. I have no doubt that those men and boys went to sleep many nights calling out for their version of "Mama" in their sleep. Their mother, who would never hug them again, the mother of their children and those children who they would never see again. The "Mama's" of their lives, their hearts, their souls, and their native home, ripped from them.
The rage of these riots is rooted in the rage that fermented when these human beings were auctioned off to the highest bidder and enslaved as laborers, forbidden to learn to read, beaten and otherwise demeaned. It is the rage that is painfully played out in the most recent making of the movie, "Birth of a Nation," as a slave owner is pressured to whip his childhood friend, a slave, for disobedience. It is the rage that is portrayed when that slave has no hesitation in killing the owner, with whom he had played as a child and whose mother taught him to read. It is the rage that, I imagine, was played out, if not in their minds, in the hearts of those men and, eventually women, every night when they tried to sleep, as the vision and warmth of "Mama" escaped their souls.
The rage of these riots deepened its roots in such events as when slaves in Texas did not hear about the Emancipation Proclamation for two and a half years after it was proclaimed. The feeling of having 2.5 years of your life stolen. That kind of rage that must have echoed in their hearts on those first nights of "freedom" when they tried to comprehend what had happened, leaving them behind. What else could their hearts exclaim at the end of those first days, but a cry to "Mama."
This rage has its story told in "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson. My tour of Oak Alley also taught me the facts I never learned in history books that only the males were freed at first and that many of the men remained and worked on the plantation for meager wages to "buy" their wives and children from the slave owner. Ms. Wilkerson writes how former slaves were then released to "freedom." Uneducated intentionally, unskilled by design. They had and no chance to broaden their skills and to break free of poverty. They were told they could go anywhere they wanted....with nothing. When they got there, they were relegated to what would become the slums, out of sight and were perfectly free to continue to serve as maids, servants, laborers and outsiders in a white world. Awakened by the cold splash of reality that "freedom" did not mean much to them, they found that another sun was not much warmer. They must have called out to "Mama" as they drifted off to sleep in those desperate surroundings.
These riots are fueled by the rage of decades of being segregated in every way, without the vote to make change, given whatever education they could get in their separate and unequal systems. They saw their inventions (the cotton gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, many medical inventions) taken and no credit given. When "integration" happened, they could still be made unwelcomed enough to avoid everyday establishments. Only now can I begin to grasp the courage it took for Clarence, a sixth grader, to come into my classroom in the beginning of school in 1966. He was the only Black person in the class, bussed from the school he was familiar with and the Black teachers that understood his culture. He was one of probably a dozen in that University Training School population. How lost he must have felt. For decades, Black people were not allowed to buy homes in white neighborhoods, even when they could afford them. They had no choice but to accept sub-standard housing in developments that were convenient to nothing. How many times did they have to shake their heads and find the only word that expressed the depth of what they felt, but could not speak..."Mama."
The rage of these riots has been buried under layers and layers of "normalization" and minimization. This timebomb has been ticking for years. It had the perfect opportunity to explode. The Black portion of those in poverty plus those others with Brown skin are a vast majority of those impoverished. The statistics show that they are being impacted the most by COVID19 and have the fewest resources for survival, treatment and stability. This morning, I heard a minister say "COVID was the powder keg, George Floyd was the match." Yet, we are rushing to re-open, not for the executives to go back to work. They never stopped working and getting paid. It was to get the hourly workers that make the wheels of business turn so the money could be made.- they clean the floors, fix the HVAC, cook the meals, drive the trucks....you get the picture...to get them back to work. Most of them paid wages on which few of us could live. They want them to be out and about, exposing them to people who refuse to wear masks because it is their "right." We, who have been able to work from home. want them to get back to work so we won't have to pay for delivery of food. Exhausted, scared, angry for "no apparent reason" and feeling pressure to go on, when they finally get quiet, what else can they call out, but "Mama," not truly knowing what that mantra means any more.
What IS the Issue?
The issue is the abscess that is Racial Injustice is 400 years old and has been festering and developing pressure. COVID19 squeezed the abscess and Mr. Floyd's murder was the pointed knife that has given the putrid rage a way out. It must not be sealed up, covered over or ignored or it will poison our system and the chaos will continue to rule. It, like any abscess, must be drained, packed with healing and slowly allowed to heal from the depths of the Collective Unconscious, lest it just return, with fortified encasement to build up more tension, anger and destructive putrification.
What IS the Issue?
The issue is the abscess that is Racial Injustice is 400 years old and has been festering and developing pressure. COVID19 squeezed the abscess and Mr. Floyd's murder was the pointed knife that has given the putrid rage a way out. It must not be sealed up, covered over or ignored or it will poison our system and the chaos will continue to rule. It, like any abscess, must be drained, packed with healing and slowly allowed to heal from the depths of the Collective Unconscious, lest it just return, with fortified encasement to build up more tension, anger and destructive putrification.
I am beginning to think that many of the protesters have no idea how to explain the magnitude of their rage. That rage must be felt in their bones, something they knew without being taught since they could talk. For some unconscious reason, when it is punctured and accessed by events, it rumbles to life and rockets them into destruction and behavior that says the same thing over and over, louder and louder and begins to take it out on buildings, cars, institutions. While, today, the focus is the police. That is the "problem, not the Issue."
Bumper Sticker: Sometimes, The Problem is NOT the Issue!
The target at which we must focus the rage in order to find healing is all the institutions that have treated so many humans with so little civility in the name of "Justice." They have known since birth that their life was not valued by many, that, because of the color they wear in their skin, their life is devalued by those with lighter skin, just as the value of others of color are less valued. If you haven't watched the three NBC Today anchors talk about how they fear for their children and themselves, go to the website and watch it.(Today Video - watch to at least 13:00) Watch it over and over. I cried when I heard a mother say that her children cried when they heard that a policeman could kill a man and not be arrested and asked, if that wasn't the job of police, to protect. They had to begin learning their heritage, imposed by the world.
Bumper Sticker: Sometimes, The Problem is NOT the Issue!
The target at which we must focus the rage in order to find healing is all the institutions that have treated so many humans with so little civility in the name of "Justice." They have known since birth that their life was not valued by many, that, because of the color they wear in their skin, their life is devalued by those with lighter skin, just as the value of others of color are less valued. If you haven't watched the three NBC Today anchors talk about how they fear for their children and themselves, go to the website and watch it.(Today Video - watch to at least 13:00) Watch it over and over. I cried when I heard a mother say that her children cried when they heard that a policeman could kill a man and not be arrested and asked, if that wasn't the job of police, to protect. They had to begin learning their heritage, imposed by the world.
What is it going to take?
This process is not going to be easy. We are going to have to see the "Us-vs-Them mentality as the most divisive tool in the argument and realize that we are one planet. Brian McLaren, in his book Why Did Jesus, Moses, The Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road, discusses the root of this problem, which is that it is not an external conflict. The real conflict is that, if we truly embrace "them" and see how our "us-ness" threatens us, we could lose our membership in Us. The fear on each side of the argument is, at least in part, fear of being thrown to the wolves by being ejected from "Us."
From where it sits now, the Police and all that they represent ("Us") are going to have to sit on the ground, unarmed, and silent, facing the protesters and admit in a genuine fashion that the "Us" represent the root cause of their deeper rage and have participated in it, both consciously and unconsciously, much of the time benefitting from it. All of the members of the "Us" team have to bring our fears and, like the fighting wolves, admit that we do not have what it takes to win and bare our proverbial throats, then admit nothing can ever fully compensate for all the harm that has been done. This is one of the first principles in learning to express our understanding of the losses caused by actions of generations that echo in every day, every place and every time. This will lead to learning to show the kind of empathy that has no words and, often, is spoken only in the weeping that comes when two souls connect and see how fragile and frail the other is and how impotent we are to ease their pain. All that humans can do can do is love them, whatever that means, in a way that reaches into hearts and changes lives. Yes, some things we think are precious will be sacrificed. By learning to grieve those privileges and accept a more just and balanced culture, even doing without many things we really don't need, but feel entitled to. A certain level of "profit" may be lost. Finding out how to admit that the disdain that drives distance and fear for those who are different is ours and not about the "Thems" allows us to begin to focus on similarities, even if it is only the fact that, in the end, when we return to dust. Learning that letting go of power does not mean losing strength, especially, when sharing power with those who have never barely had any. This can build trust that this country that we created is enough and will be enough for us all, and accepting that it will not be in the way it looks today.
For those who have been hurt, this means that fighting "Us" will never correct the wounds you carry in your genes and in the Collective Unconscious that only you have access to. Beginning to heal this may well take a shift like this planet has never seen to move from fighting and defending to working in tandem. Healing the losses of generations by grieving all the hopes that have been dashed and all the dreams that never made it to daylight. To embrace and accept those losses and move them on to a safe place to continue to honor the grief they need to heal from within each time the sun shines the memory of them again. Do not let them be forgotten until they are celebrated as the foundation of our future. This will take learning to look into the eyes of those who you have feared and begin to find the same light you see in the mirror, flickering behind the fear and defenses, then begin to show your light to them. In doing so, letting go of whatever image you had forced upon you by generations will help you to see yourself differently, free of the constraints of fighting the past, accepting that age-old unmet needs of the past that reside deep in your genetic vibration. Somewhere in the soul of the beat of those vibrations is the connection with "Mama" in all her manifestations ripped from you over and over. The answers are in the faces that have been afraid to look into the pain. Only you can guide the way to answer the call, knowing it won't be fulfilled ever in its hisoric dissonance, then embracing the healing anyway.
When we join together to make a long term, long range plan that all can live with, hurt with and be patient with, accepting that the old thought patterns and stereotypes will not disappear immediately, new visions are able to form. I feel guilty to admit that I still have to look into the eyes of a black man when we cross the street to remind myself that he did not get out of bed this morning to find a way to hurt me. It hurts to see how difficult that is sometimes - he fears looking at me. Nobody ever told me that, but it is stuck somewhere in my Amygdala, the warning center of my brain. I have to tell it to be quiet. I once told a very big Black friend of mine, very timidly, that I was really scared of him when he first introduced himself to me. I told him, long after he had demonstrated that he was smart, kind, gentle, understanding and creative, that this was my old truth. He was puzzled. He came back to me a few days later and told me that another Caucasian friend of his, about my age, admitted the same thing. He just shook his head and chuckled. Today, reminding him how glad I didn't act on my scaredy-cat feelings gives us a laugh and helps me to, hopefully, make amends for my stereotype. By embracing and learning to appreciate each other's cultures as unique, not from a point of judgment, but from curiosity and understanding, we see individuals in a new light. We have so much to teach each other about ourselves that we really need to waste as little time as we can fighting about it .
Some will lose some things we think we value. Some will gain more than we ever thought we could. If it keeps us out of this explosive state we are in, we will be glad when all the work is done. I know Black people and people of all colors have it in them to make it. They survived a culture that was unwelcoming, even hostile and made their way to have their foothold to be heard today. We must keep talking and listening.....all of us. The REAL issue is that we never listened to the cries of those we were hurting and we never turned the cries into a conversation. We were afraid of "Us" reprimanding us and did not know that "Them" was not a threat. We all have tears to shed and laughter to share. Thanks for reading this.
This process is not going to be easy. We are going to have to see the "Us-vs-Them mentality as the most divisive tool in the argument and realize that we are one planet. Brian McLaren, in his book Why Did Jesus, Moses, The Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road, discusses the root of this problem, which is that it is not an external conflict. The real conflict is that, if we truly embrace "them" and see how our "us-ness" threatens us, we could lose our membership in Us. The fear on each side of the argument is, at least in part, fear of being thrown to the wolves by being ejected from "Us."
From where it sits now, the Police and all that they represent ("Us") are going to have to sit on the ground, unarmed, and silent, facing the protesters and admit in a genuine fashion that the "Us" represent the root cause of their deeper rage and have participated in it, both consciously and unconsciously, much of the time benefitting from it. All of the members of the "Us" team have to bring our fears and, like the fighting wolves, admit that we do not have what it takes to win and bare our proverbial throats, then admit nothing can ever fully compensate for all the harm that has been done. This is one of the first principles in learning to express our understanding of the losses caused by actions of generations that echo in every day, every place and every time. This will lead to learning to show the kind of empathy that has no words and, often, is spoken only in the weeping that comes when two souls connect and see how fragile and frail the other is and how impotent we are to ease their pain. All that humans can do can do is love them, whatever that means, in a way that reaches into hearts and changes lives. Yes, some things we think are precious will be sacrificed. By learning to grieve those privileges and accept a more just and balanced culture, even doing without many things we really don't need, but feel entitled to. A certain level of "profit" may be lost. Finding out how to admit that the disdain that drives distance and fear for those who are different is ours and not about the "Thems" allows us to begin to focus on similarities, even if it is only the fact that, in the end, when we return to dust. Learning that letting go of power does not mean losing strength, especially, when sharing power with those who have never barely had any. This can build trust that this country that we created is enough and will be enough for us all, and accepting that it will not be in the way it looks today.
For those who have been hurt, this means that fighting "Us" will never correct the wounds you carry in your genes and in the Collective Unconscious that only you have access to. Beginning to heal this may well take a shift like this planet has never seen to move from fighting and defending to working in tandem. Healing the losses of generations by grieving all the hopes that have been dashed and all the dreams that never made it to daylight. To embrace and accept those losses and move them on to a safe place to continue to honor the grief they need to heal from within each time the sun shines the memory of them again. Do not let them be forgotten until they are celebrated as the foundation of our future. This will take learning to look into the eyes of those who you have feared and begin to find the same light you see in the mirror, flickering behind the fear and defenses, then begin to show your light to them. In doing so, letting go of whatever image you had forced upon you by generations will help you to see yourself differently, free of the constraints of fighting the past, accepting that age-old unmet needs of the past that reside deep in your genetic vibration. Somewhere in the soul of the beat of those vibrations is the connection with "Mama" in all her manifestations ripped from you over and over. The answers are in the faces that have been afraid to look into the pain. Only you can guide the way to answer the call, knowing it won't be fulfilled ever in its hisoric dissonance, then embracing the healing anyway.
When we join together to make a long term, long range plan that all can live with, hurt with and be patient with, accepting that the old thought patterns and stereotypes will not disappear immediately, new visions are able to form. I feel guilty to admit that I still have to look into the eyes of a black man when we cross the street to remind myself that he did not get out of bed this morning to find a way to hurt me. It hurts to see how difficult that is sometimes - he fears looking at me. Nobody ever told me that, but it is stuck somewhere in my Amygdala, the warning center of my brain. I have to tell it to be quiet. I once told a very big Black friend of mine, very timidly, that I was really scared of him when he first introduced himself to me. I told him, long after he had demonstrated that he was smart, kind, gentle, understanding and creative, that this was my old truth. He was puzzled. He came back to me a few days later and told me that another Caucasian friend of his, about my age, admitted the same thing. He just shook his head and chuckled. Today, reminding him how glad I didn't act on my scaredy-cat feelings gives us a laugh and helps me to, hopefully, make amends for my stereotype. By embracing and learning to appreciate each other's cultures as unique, not from a point of judgment, but from curiosity and understanding, we see individuals in a new light. We have so much to teach each other about ourselves that we really need to waste as little time as we can fighting about it .
Some will lose some things we think we value. Some will gain more than we ever thought we could. If it keeps us out of this explosive state we are in, we will be glad when all the work is done. I know Black people and people of all colors have it in them to make it. They survived a culture that was unwelcoming, even hostile and made their way to have their foothold to be heard today. We must keep talking and listening.....all of us. The REAL issue is that we never listened to the cries of those we were hurting and we never turned the cries into a conversation. We were afraid of "Us" reprimanding us and did not know that "Them" was not a threat. We all have tears to shed and laughter to share. Thanks for reading this.
