Dominant White Mind

So as we gather ourselves up to face another day, we turn to the pundits to explain away the motives of a “good man” that allowed him to massacre people like picking fish in a barrel.

Let me save you some time. He was sick. He carried a disease, which has now in one way or another infected all of us. I call it dominant white mind and you do not have to have white skin to be infected.

It is a disease born of not knowing who you are. It is a perversion, a symptom of not recognizing the connectedness of all living things. Can it be healed? Absolutely. What is required for this healing? A keen desire to be alive and the humility to recognize the need are the first steps.

How can we recognize white mind syndrome? The syndrome begins by walking lock step with a society that ignores violence and promotes and even champions the perpetrators. It is a society that is blatantly racist as seen in prison statistics, educational statistics, availability of good food and clean water to people in need. It is a society that condones or turns a blind eye to the beating, raping and killing of women, the enslavement of children for sex, the trafficking of humans for menial labor, the destruction of the earth for profit, and then cries foul when these abnormalities are declared for what they are: perversions.

It is a society that revels in “us and them”. We cannot seem to step over this great divide even as it now appears we are annihilating one another. It is a society so hell bent on being angry, we have lost sight of what we are angry about…and I would assert to you we are angry because we – in our highest and truest nature – are compromised. We have forgotten who we are.

Explanations and excuses abound to cover up our inadequacies. Seldom will we allow the voice of reason to dominate. Seldom will we allow the voice of love or peace to prevail. In a few short years we have nearly destroyed countries in the Mid-East and now we are working on Africa; we have remembered the children of Sandy Hook by allowing more high powered guns to be sold; we have shot at peaceful citizens with rubber bullets, water cannons and infiltrated their efforts with paid mercenaries at Standing Rock; and we acquit police who are killing our people of color in shockingly inhuman ways. And our response has been, “Another beer please”, or whatever gets you through the night.

So while you eagerly await the girl friend’s input, the psychologist’s declaration, the clergy’s prayers and hold your breath knowing there might be another ticking time bomb just around your corner – let me remind you that this IS reversible. Stop making excuses. Stop the white fragility – and again I will tell you it is not only contained in white skin – it is a disease of the soul that has permitted ignorance to reign, and it has been reigning decades, no centuries, and it is time for its reign to end.

Stand up. Discover your humanity in its totality. Peace is waiting for you where it has always been. We are creating “good men” who are hiding their sickness from us because they can blend in to an already disgustingly sick culture. They can hide their sickness because we are all too afraid to call out the truth: we are all culpable. We pull the trigger every time we judge, every time we turn our backs to injustice, every time we make an excuse for our insistence on wallowing in our lowest – not our highest – nature. We can change this. We can. Each one of us can. It takes a bit of honesty. It takes a bit of courage. It takes a bit of clarity. And it takes a whole lot of love. There is no short cut, no law, no punishment, no forgiveness that will end the suffering we have allowed. We must heal. We must grapple with who we are, the Good and the Bad, and we must leave room for the reality that we are both and we are neither. For ourselves and for those who will come after, we can do this.