Hi, This is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track. Welcome to the latest episode.

In this episode I want to talk about something that seems to cause a lot of division amongst people, a lot of arguments, a lot of sometimes healthy discussion, sometimes unhealthy, lots of protests, etc, etc. That subject is racism.

You get a lot of people being accused of being racist, of downplaying minorities or people who are of a different cultural background, ethnicity, skin colour, etc. I want to put my little bit in. You may not agree with what I say. At least I hope you'll ponder it. Even though I'm talking about racism, you could apply this same statement or theme for this episode to sexism, ageism, prejudice. It's all basically the same thing. However, I'm going to focus on the racism portion because that seems to be one that people relate to a lot easier.

The big challenge seems to be that a lot of people try to state that they are not racist, and this is where my first challenge comes with. In regard to racism is that awareness is 50% of any growth, 50% of any journey, it's the hardest part, is admitting things, and from what I can see, because of what I've been through in my life, what I've witnessed, what I've been a part of, yeah, I've got a view of racism that I want to put forward.

This is what I want you to contemplate. Think about. I understand that it may trigger off certain things within yourself, that it may give you cause to be angry or upset, and that's okay, because when those emotions are triggered, that's an opportunity for growth. So first of all, I want to talk about racism itself. Part of our human brain is a little bit lazy. So what it does, is it generalises and not just people, it generalises with everything, so we know what a door looks like. We know what a glass looks like. So what we do is we generalise things until we have a chance to process them.

The challenge that we've created for ourselves is that with this generalisation we don't tend to move past it. People are inclined to associate with people that are the same cultural group as themselves, same ethnicity, the same religious beliefs, the same opinions, so we tend to be a little bit insular. We don't tend to expand ourselves to understand or learn about other people with different views, different opinions, different upbringings.

I myself, I'll give you a little bit of a history so you can understand where my view of racism comes from. I was born and raised in Australia, and I know this is getting listened to around the world. So I was born and raised in Australia and I'm in my fifties now. So growing up it was predominantly in the seventies and eighties, and we didn't have a lot of different ethnicities in this place where I grew up. So most of the people I knew were white Anglo Saxons, usually of at least first generation Australian. So at least our parents were usually born here, so we would call ourselves Australian, but generally we're not because we're only first generation we're just Australian born.

So we have a group of people in Australia. They don't make up a large percentage of our population. However, they are certainly subject to a lot of challenges, and that's the aboriginal people, or as we call them now, those First Nations people and growing up, I didn't have a problem with these First Nations people. I'll call them by their proper name. I didn't have a problem with them. I never clashed with them. I tended to know them, treated them with decency. I didn't denigrate them. I didn't put them down. I still tried to avoid doing that as much as possible to the point where even if I was on the street and I do remember one incident very clearly where I was walking along by myself at night time near my house and there was a group of aboriginal lads coming towards me. Sorry, First Nations lads coming towards me, and there would have been probably seven of them, eight of them and most people would panic. However, I didn't because I recognised a few of them. So as we got closer, they obviously realised they knew me. And so it was a "Hi, how are you going?" And I replied to "doing good, take it easy" and kept walking.

So I've never had a problem with them and never had a need to fear them. However, I understand why people do fear them because they are inclined to have a... and again, this is a generalisation because they're not all like this. I've met ones that are different, but they seem to have a frustration and anger that runs through them at a deeper level. And that anger when you know their history is understandable. And this is one of those things where a lot of people don't bother to learn.

So I understand, as I learn more and more about what's happened to them in our history, I can understand their frustration, and it's a complex and challenging situation to get out of, and it's not easy. However, It starts with a basic truth, and that is, all of us, every single human on this planet is racist. This is something that a lot of people seem to struggle with, is just being able to say I am racist and I am. I know that when I look at certain people who are of a definite, different persuasion, whether that's skin colour, ethnicity, cultural upbringings, religious opinions, whatever it is, I do operate from a generalisation. I try not to. I'm not comfortable with it, and I try to get to know people without acknowledging or operating from that generalisation too much.

I've got a bit of evidence for this. I want to tell a little bit of a story about a woman, an amazing woman. She said something which perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about. There's a woman by the name of Jane Elliott, and in the sixties, just after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, she was a schoolteacher, and she decided to teach her young class about racism. She devised an experiment where she had them wear a colour according to their colour, because your eye colour, like your skin colour, cannot be chosen by yourself. You just end up with that because of your genetics.

She had these Children experience the discrimination that people of skin colour experience. So in other words, she made them victims of racism. So this was an area that only had white people, so they didn't get to really see or experience, people of a different ethnicity and certainly not of a different skin colour. And she had one side experience it. People with blue eyes. So people like myself and then she had the other side experience it, and this was made into a documentary.

I watched it quite a number of years ago, and it impacted me, and the reason it impacted me was one particular moment, and this is the moment I want to talk about. So this is a woman, when they were interviewing or in this documentary, she had been working on teaching racism in using this type of experiment, with adults as well for many, many years. So she had been subject to all sorts of threats and situations where she was attacked. Her family was attacked, her husband, her children and they were put through quite a hell, a lot of horrible stuff. So she strongly believed in what she was doing, which was educating people about racism. She also now teaches about ageism, sexism, prejudice.

Anyway, she was driving along, and she's talking as she's driving. And she was saying after I think at the time it was about 40 years she had been doing this. So she's driving along, and a news article came on the radio. I think it was something like a break-in. It happened, and she said that her first thought, this is a woman that had been spending decades trying to get people to understand racism. Her first thought was, "Please don't let it be a person of colour", and she realised she was still racist.

It is not something that needs to be shunned. It's something that needs to be understood. If you understand that you're racist, you can then do something about it. So I know that, for example, let's say I have an opportunity to talk to someone who's from a different country, different religious upbringing, a different whatever I can then get to know them and understand that world a little better, just from their point of view, at least so it changes my view just a little bit, and then the more I have an opportunity to do that and the more I do it, the more I can learn about these people, whatever their situation is, and then I can understand it.

So I feel if you can at least say "Yes, I am racist", that's 50% of your journey. Then it's just acknowledging that you're not comfortable with it. You don't want to be racist, and you can then do something about it. So that's what I try to do. So, am I still racist? Yes. Unfortunately, I have these generalised thoughts. Am I happy with it? Am I comfortable with it? Not at all. I don't enjoy it. So therefore I am working at it.

A couple of other things I want to put forward about this and again, you might have a reaction, and that's your choice. You're allowed to. I would like you to just consider this what I'm saying. In America, there has been a big push over the last few years for black lives matter. And there's people that go all lives matter. All lives matter and they do. All lives do matter. The challenges that people, not just people that are of dark skin colour, black people or African American, whatever term you want to use, the challenge they have, as do people in Australia who are First Nations descent. The challenge that they have views they are below what the general population has. So they have prejudices that they battle with.

So some of the people who partook of Jane Elliott's experiment. So when they do it, obviously people that are blue eyed, they'd have to go off to a room while they prep for the experiment, and the people that are left, obviously people that are dark skin. So Middle Eastern, African American. One of the experiments she did was conducted in America. And she is talking to these people of dark skin, the African Americans about their experiences and what they go through every day? They're explaining how they have to battle so many things, and again, something powerful that happened is, she said, to these people "Who here has friends that are in the room that are blue eyed?", and of course, they put their hands up.

This is after asking the African Americans of their experience every single day that they have to go through just to be able to survive. She asked these people "Who here who has a friend in that room, and thinks that they won't be able to cope with what we're about to put them through?" A heap of people put their hands up, and she said, "Do you realise what you have just done?" Of course they didn't click, and she said that "you're saying your friends for one hour, well, the two hours that we're doing this experiment won't be able to tolerate or put up with what African American people have to go through every single day of their lives?"

And it was like something turned on me and I went, Oh my God, she's right And there is a lot of crap that black people, aboriginal people, First Nations people, all of these people have all of these extra challenges that we do not. That's a generalisation because there are black people that don't have it quite as much, African American people that don't have it quite as much, same as there are white people that have more challenges. As a generalisation, people of some sort of skin colour go through a lot more racism, and it is true if they walked through a shop, they get watched more because everyone thinks you're going to steal something.

I've seen this illustrated so many times about the differences in actions, and I feel one of the big things moving forward in healing this, in learning from it, in becoming better from it, is if we all just say I am racist. In other words, I acknowledge that I am part of the problem. Therefore, If I'm part of the problem, I can be part of the solution and that is one of the keys with moving forward in this regard.

Another one I wanted to talk about was the aboriginal people or First Nations people. Back in 2008, there was a young lady in far north Queensland who was the first person in her community to go to university, and she qualified to become a lawyer. And in some of the wisest words I have ever heard uttered by a person ever is. She's standing in amongst her community, this young First Nations woman, and she says "Our problem cannot be fixed with money. We cannot rely on the white man to fix our problem. We have to fix our problem. It is up to us to fix it". And she was absolutely right.

Any problem can only be fixed by you, and that means if you acknowledge your part of the problem, then you can do something about it. And one of the attitudes that seems to be reasonably prevalent and understandably so, is these First Nations, people who are subject to all of these situations and circumstances and history that have caused them a lot of pain and have contributed to this anger that seems to be running through them. They need to realise that they are also not only part of the problem, but also part of the solution, and it takes all of us going "Up until now, we have done it in a way that is not effective. We can now do something differently", and I feel if we all do that, we can really move forward, same as with in the United States with the African American people. If they, and everyone said yes, we have this history, it's unpleasant, it's uncomfortable. Every country in the world actually could have the same attitude, "We have this history where we have not treated people fairly and equitably. We need to do something different. We now acknowledge this history, as uncomfortable as it may be, and now we can do something different. Now we can move forward and heal and create better relationships and understand each other better".

So what I ask of you is are you willing to say "I'm racist, I am prejudiced, I'm sexist, I am ageist" because we do this sort of thing regularly with all sorts of people, and it's automatic. It's hardwired into every single one of us. No one gets out of jail free on this one. We are all racist. We are all sexist. We're all prejudiced to different degrees. But we all have it. And in order to fix this challenge, this obstacle, as with any challenge or obstacle, you have to acknowledge it. And if we all acknowledge that we're part of the problem, then we can all start to fix it.

So that was the episode I wanted to talk about. Today was about racism and prejudice and I wanted to put forward my little bit. You can disagree. That's fine. However, I would like, prefer, if you would think about what I've said. It's not comfortable. I don't sit comfortably with the term racist or prejudice or sexist or any of it. However, it is part of my wiring. My upbringing contributed to it. I see it compounded by media and situations that I see every single day those things exist, so moving forward can be challenging for me personally, though I can work on me. I can't change the world, but I can change the people I interact with and I can change myself.

So if I take control of that and responsibility for that and try to encourage others to do the same, then maybe we can start to move forward and really make change. Because if you take away our labels, our skin colours, agendas, our cultural upbringing, our religious upbringings, whatever that is. Take that away, and we're all just human beings. We all have wants, needs, desires, hopes, dreams. We're all the same in the end.

So anyway, that's today's episode, I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope it inspires you to do something. Hope it inspires you to get out there and, yeah, make your bit of the world a little bit better. And if we all do that, maybe, just maybe we'll get this world to be something that's worth being in.

If you've got any feedback, feel free to send it in. I now have an option in the show notes where there's a link that you can click and you can leave me a 9o second voice message, because I like hearing voices. So if you want to do that as well again, I just want to reiterate, you might have a contrary view to what I've spoken about, and that is okay, that is your choice.

If you feel the need to voice a differing opinion or a frustration or anger in my direction, please do it respectfully. I'm happy to listen if it's respectful, because then I can learn something. So please refrain from doing any of that. So, yes, it would be wonderful to have feedback and have discussions and dialogues.

I hope this helped you, hope it's inspired you, I hope you can make your bit of the world a little bit better for the people that you care about, for the people that you value, as well as yourself.

So take care, enjoy your day, look after yourself and remember, here's to a good life.

You can listen to the Life Back On Track podcast on your favourite platform by visiting our podcast website. Click HERE to check it out. 

You can also listen to my radio show “All About Relationships” which has its own podcast on your favourite platform by clicking HERE 

Thanks for listening.