Racial Unity

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Let me ask you a question. What makes my white skin better than my friend’s black skin?
Allow me to answer this question. Nothing.
The difference is only in one thing. The way people are programmed to think. I highlight the phrase programmed to think, not born to think, or think naturally. A child is like a Plasticine. A new born baby can be shaped into a million versions of self, brought up in so many ways and taught to believe in so many different things, take so many life directions and become many different versions of self. Depending on what he has been taught.

“People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Along with that, it is important to highlight that sociologists do not offer a clear answer to the question of what influences us more, our genes or our environment. The discussion about what does shape and affect our personality and way of thinking remains lacking a concrete answer and there are many opinions in regarding this question. I would add, that from my personal life experience, in the past 9 years while I lived in four different countries, the variety of social set-ups, consistency, and structure, helped me to shape the person that I have become and served as a guiding line in being able to finalize a self-identity in which I fully found myself. Nevertheless, I will add, that for a long time I was observing the details of different lives, societies, religions and cultures layouts, which I am thankful I had the ability and the opportunity to do, in order to build a more clear picture in my head and understand where do I belong and how do I identify myself. But of course, the journey is endless.

I wrote in the past about ego, and how it destroys us. Here is an abstract from one of my previous posts.

•  The ego is an enemy. Kindness is a friend.

When I first realized that there is a thing that lives in us called ego, I did not completely understand how destructive it is for us, and how much work it takes to eliminate it from our minds. I am not even sure if it can be ever all gone, but it can definitely be placed in a very strict control. I find ego one of the biggest enemies of a person, of all relationships and one of the main reasons for conflicts in interaction in between people. I taught myself to put kindness in the first place, put ego as far as possible from my mind and let the kindness be my best friend and lead.
“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you are already in heaven now”. Jack Kerouac

From the post “26 lessons I learned by the age of 26”.

Today I want to add about the best friend of the Ego. Named, Ignorance.
Together they form a dangerous combination, a combination that blurs the mind of a person and does not allow clear thinking. 
A lot of racism, lack of tolerance to the other and hatred has its source in the ego of the ignorant human who believes in being better than the other, chosen or of a higher and social group.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Baha’i Faith, the world’s newest independent global belief system, teaches the oneness of God, the unity of humanity and the essential harmony of religion.

Baha’is believe in peace, justice, love, altruism, and unity. The Baha’i teachings promote the agreement of science and religion, the equality of the sexes and the elimination of all prejudice and racism.

“We spend our lives trying to unlock the mystery of the universe, but there was a Turkish prisoner, Baha’u’llah, in Akka, Palestine who had the key”.  
Leo Tolstoy

“From the Jewish ideal of treating the stranger as one of our own, to Christ’s appeal to care for even people whose differences we believe should cause us to despise them, to Muhammad’s insistence that we were put upon this earth in all our human diversity that we may know and not despise each other. These founders of the world’s great Faiths have offered us the same essential message”. Maya Bohnhoff, a Baha’i and a New York Times bestselling author.

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

With Love,

Yana