Learning About Unconscious Racism

The past three weeks have been such a wake-up call for me.  

I’ve been learning a lot, and still have so much to learn about systemic racism and how to become a better ally. I expect I’ll be learning for the rest of my life. 

Kara Lowentheil did a podcast about working with our thoughts that I found helpful, so I wanted to share some of her main points. 

1) Thoughts are just sentences in our minds. What is in our minds gets programmed there by social conditioning. From the time we’re born, we absorb ideas from everything around us – our family, friends, teachers and other authority figures, television, movies, advertising, books – literally everything we encounter. 

2) When we grow up in a white-dominant society, we can’t help but absorb biased thoughts. That’s true even if we grow up in a family that isn’t overtly racist – there are so many other influences in society. And most of those biased thoughts are operating at a level below our conscious awareness. 

3) Thoughts aren’t inherently good or bad. Random thoughts that pop into our minds don’t make us a good or bad person. It’s our actions that matter – what we choose to think, say, and do. If we believe that having a racist thought makes us a bad person, we won’t be willing to shine the light on the biased thoughts that are floating around in our unconscious, which makes it much harder to change those thoughts. 

4) Perfectionism and people pleasing can make it hard to show up and live in alignment with our deepest values. Being afraid of making a mistake or offending someone can keep us from showing up in the ways we want to.  

5) The best way to develop the courage to stand up for what we believe in (and to do anything else in life that seems scary) is to take small, consistent actions.  

What small step could you take today? Such as educating yourself, making a donation, writing an email, posting on social media – the possibilities are endless. The most important thing is just to start. 

Please take good care of your heart centered self. Our world needs you! 

Hugs, 

Liz