We white folk can be sympathetic & supportive to causes we espouse. & We can throw all our resources into actively fighting the intolerances & bigotry around us every day. We can fight to stop injustices and oppression but let's face it, we cannot understand, truly get it, until we have lived in the your shoes.
I am pantheistic, bisexual and open to the infinite degree to try and understand and coexist with other races, creeds, genders, cultures and life choices. Our world is made up of so many wonderful unique vibrant people! I truly want to know what other cultures embrace, what another soul may hold dear and maybe I can glean a little insight into their experiences.
I feel almost every subculture or social group has a place in this world in this community, so long as it doesn't stomp on the choices of another. You gotta wanna! You have to be a consensual partner in your life's play.
I was born female, white, middle class, raised Catholic, stayed that way until I grew out of it. I was always looking for new experiences new adventures so I was always open to other peoples' life choices. It never occurred to me to be prejudiced, bigoted or scared of other cultures, skin colors, or sexualities, unless and until I saw someone infringing on another person's inalienable rights to body soul & self. I never ascribed one person's flaw or feature to apply to ALL or even most of their given subculture, ethnicity, religion or gender or subset of society. We are all one race, the human race, and our humanity is what binds us and it should be what defines us.
We should strive to see what we have in common with someone else, rather than what sets us apart. New is not bad, different is not negative, and non-conformity is not an act of aggression unless you make it so. As we stare around us trying to fathom what the hell happened here, and how our country could have devolved to this state in such a rapid pace, several things occur to me. The emperor was always naked. Believing otherwise was just a delusion and a dangerous one at that.
Class and race differences have always been used as an excuse for bad behavior, a convenient justification for people who choose to do evil to enable them to do so without regret or conscience getting in the way. The same mentality, same families and souls that were just fine buying and selling black people to become their property as slaves, had no hesitation about doing the exact same thing to white people or Hispanic people or any people. They just had to find enough reasons or differences to make their intended victim less worthy than themselves of freedom, power, happiness or success.
When they justify their behavior in their minds they only need to find one thing different, one thing less in common with you, one reason that you should suffer and do their bidding, you should be reviled, disenfranchised, you should sacrifice not them.
I think it can best be defined by a difference not of opinion but of heart. Hearts are different. I think there is a fundamental toggle, a setting in the soul wherein one person either agrees that everyone else has the same rights as they do, or they don't. The ones with the toggle of closed-heart feel they are innately superior and for whatever reason their needs or will should come first. No matter what, they have a right to what they want simply because they want it and it supercedes all social contracts, all mores, all cultural traditions of right & wrong.
Those with an open-heart look for ways for all to rise up, all to succeed, for the whole tribe to benefit rather than just a few individuals. When we bootstrap each-other and link arms, we all rise together, no one gets left behind. Some may peak faster, rise a little higher, for a while, but that's okay, so long as the combined successes the enjoined triumphs and the evolution of all takes us as a society to a brighter and more powerful happier healthier way of living that truly defines us as a species, truly marks us as EVOLVED.
