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One of my earliest memories of altruism is the boy scout oath. “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country…” These words made simple sense of how to live, even at the age of nine. They helped me focus on the ability to ‘help other people’.
Soon I learned a word for this character quality: Altruism. We are all capable of being altruists. We are all capable of helping. The permanent question is how? This question requires a look in the mirror to see who and what makes up this person staring back at me.
Do you value that you as a white male very often get better treatment than men of color in this country? If you and a Black man walk past whites on the street or into a store or restaurant, it’s very likely that the whites in the store will be more open, trusting and appreciative of you and more guarded and mistrusting of the other guy just because of his skin color. What we experience as a judgment of others as inferior is the opposite of altruism, it’s fear.
This has led to a lifetime of understanding the value of seeing others as part of the same world I am in. Some people call it appropriately color blind. Seeing a person like us with a heart, muscles, nerves, skeleton, rather than a threat to our privilege of power.
It turns out that the privilege, which people of all colors possess, is life. We are here to learn to use our potential for caring and growing by sharing this life openly, the way the sun and rain and earth share themselves, without regard for something as natural as color variety. We have the privilege of deciding to be altruists who bring good into this unfolding moment, or to be phobics believing in danger that is imagined.
I grew up as part of the lower middle class in an all-white neighborhood. The culture and language were riddled with derogatory references to people of color. As a child, I knew no better than to go with what was generally accepted about these innocent objects of derision. People who were different, i.e. not white, were seen as not only inferior, they were indefinably dangerous to me, an aloof, privileged white. I was white, they were not. I was better and that’s the way it was. Simple as black and white.
I had not yet learned altruism is privilege. For 12 or 14 years, this racial prejudice resided in my mind and body, even though I didn’t actually know anyone who was Black. Gradually, the weakness of prejudice eroded itself. Contradictions to these separative beliefs arose in my life.
One such contradiction that comes to mind is an iconic professional football player by the name of Jimmy Brown, who was clearly superior physically to just about anyone else in the game. My beliefs were challenged because he played for the hometown Cleveland Browns, and they were OUR team, and he was a star, and well, there was a contradiction. This guy was a hero. Could my hero be someone I feared? What about all the other people in this city who were also black?
Watching, listening to, and eventually meeting Jim Brown was a game changer for me. He was not intellectually inferior. He was smart and articulate and espoused team and work values I valued and couldn’t deny. My awareness shifted towards acceptance.
Fast forward through inevitable interaction with other people I had learned were part of cultures dangerous to me. Life and living with a willingness to change continued to splinter and rebuild my beliefs and attitudes.
There is within all of us a compassion that turns itself into life. This compassionate perspective is so powerful and penetrating that it shines the light of truth on assumed disparities in worth. Skin color, gender, age, politics, religion are incapable of reducing an individual’s inherent worth. Our worth is not reducible. Our value is in being here, alive, choosing.
Appearing as altruism in life is natural. An awareness of connection and compassion is what life is. Life understands and accepts itself. As for white privilege and how to use it, the answer is neutral, without color, the same for all of us: Release fear and embody compassion.
Separation from compassion requires fearful imagining. Separation without love is ignorance. As a child and teen, that’s what I often was. WAS. I was ignorant and using selfishness based on fear to guide me, rather than this blossoming sense of ‘something isn’t right’ about skin color. I’m still learning, and committed to using this life, this privilege to exist beyond fear based on skin color.
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Love this article. It speaks to the humanitarian that we should all be. I too am a huge James (Jim) Brown fan and yes he is an American icon of whom I have the privilege of knowing. I was impressed with him largely because of his humanitarian efforts during the Muhammad Ali debacle and continue to be a huge fan of his Amer-I-Can, program.