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Everyone is a Little Racist

 Episkopos X     24/SEP/2020

Everyone is a little bit racist. You're born into a culture that has embraced systemic racism for centuries, you can't help but absorb some of it. You can't help but internalize some of the racism.

This doesn't make you a bad person, this just makes you human. How you deal with the racism you've been born and raised into determines if you are a good person. If you work to recognize, correct, or reduce your racism - congrats, you're a good person. If you deny your systemic bias, fail to see the racism you hold, and proclaim yourself 'pure' - non-racist - you're likely failing at being a good person.

Most of us display our racism in very subtle ways. Most of us are not raging anti-minority. We just have a touch of racism we've inherited and bound up in our character. It can be as simple as us making assumptions based on a person's color that we don't for other peoples' colors. It can be as simple as a subconscious desire to cross the street when we see someone not like us approaching.

Again, these feelings don't make you a bad person. They don't make you a full-blown racist - you are merely a person who has some racism inside. But you don't have to keep it there. You don't have to let it fester or remain unchallenged. It's presence allows you the opportunity to grow as a person. To become better than you were. To become less racist than you were in the past, than you are now.

We grow as people when we recognize our faults and failings and challenge them. When we say to ourselves "I won't be like that anymore" and take steps to change, to grow. A person who can recognize a fault, challenge themselves, and change has true power. Power over their destiny and self. No longer driven by fate and circumstance this type of change gives you power over your own life. You become a better person in the process of this change.

The first step, however uncomfortable it makes us, is to recognize that we harbor some racism within. To recognize we've absorbed some of the racism inherent in our culture. Everyone is a little bit racist. But we don't have to continue to be.



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