Racism Article (continued from ezinearticles.com)
We Feel Victimized Only If We Choose to or We Were Taught to

We feel victimized only if we choose to feel victimized or if we were taught to feel victimized. What we were taught at an early age has a profound influence on what we choose for the rest of our lives. Allow me to illustrate the influence of what we are taught on our belief that we are victims in the following story about an experience I had while teaching a college class.

For a couple of years the book Real Love was a prescribed textbook for incoming freshman at a college not far from my home. I was invited be a guest lecturer for several of those classes once a week. Those were very enjoyable days, watching young minds light up as they finally understood the real reasons for their behavior and for the behavior of their parents and others.

One morning as I entered the classroom it was obvious that the students were pre-occupied with discussion of some intense subject. I asked what was going on, and they told me that for the first time in recent memory the room of a student on campus was broken into and vandalized with racial epithets painted on the walls. They were talking about racism and how that could happen there on that idyllic campus.

I discussed with them some of the content on race written in this article, and then I approached a young man on the front row, a large black man who was a starter on one of the athletic teams. Clearly, he could have beaten this old man to a pulp, so in retrospect my next move may not have been wise. I got right up in his face and without any preamble said, “Nigger.”

His face contorted in anger, and his fists clenched, whereupon I smiled and said, “You lose.”

Continuing to speak to him, but also speaking to the class, I said, “Look at what just happened: First, I now own you. You’re my slave, because I can make you angry any time I want. And, crazily enough, you have given me that power with a single word. Do you really want to be my slave?”

He wasn’t frowning anymore. Clearly this conversation was going differently than he had anticipated. “Well, no,” he said.

“The instant someone can make you mad,” I said, “they own you, and that’s a lousy way to live, don’t you think? Now, why does that word bother you? For two years I lived on the islands of Samoa, and out in the small villages I would often be the only white person for as far as the eye could see, or farther. As I walked on the roads, or on the beaches, children sometimes gathered to chant, ‘Palagi!! Palagi!!’ The direct translation was ‘White person’ or ‘Non-Samoan person,’ much on the order of the word gaijin for the Japanese. Although the secondary meaning and the tone were very close to ‘Nigger! Nigger!’ I wasn’t bothered in the least by the name calling. Why? Because I was a white person and, more importantly, I didn’t believe that being white made me inferior to Samoans.”

“On the other hand,” I continued, “you do believe that being black—that being a ‘nigger’—is inferior, and you believe that you are inferior. If you believed that nigger were a compliment, that word wouldn’t bother you one bit. It bothers you only when someone who thinks they’re superior calls you that name and when you believe you are something less than the person using the word. I’ve associated with groups of black people on many occasions, and they call each other by the name of nigger all the time. It doesn’t bother them much then, because they perceive themselves as relatively equal. Nigger only bothers black people when a white person uses that word, so obviously it’s not the word alone that’s the problem. The real problem is that you actually believe you’re inferior to those who call you by that name.”

“So what’s the solution?” I asked. “If you simply believed that you were not inferior, the sting of the word would disappear. Then when someone called you nigger, you would respond with something like, ‘Thanks for pointing that out, but I’d already noticed it myself. You see, I’ve been a nigger all my life. Was there anything specific you wanted to discuss other than my race?’”

The young black man was completely fascinated, as was the remainder of the class. We had moved off the field of combat—where people engage in blaming and defending and victimhood—and were having a simple discussion of enlightening principles.

“And where did you come by the belief that being black is less than being white?” I asked him. “Your parents and other black people taught you that long before white people ever had the chance. From a very young age you heard black people refer to other black people in disparaging ways. I’ve heard black people do that on many occasions. As a child you heard how white people owe black people something, and how black people are beaten down by ‘the man.’ People who don’t believe they’re in an inferior position never talk about what other people owe them, nor do they talk about how they’re beaten down.”

The conversation went on for the entire hour of the class, but these were some of the more important features. As we spoke in this manner, the tension in the room evaporated completely. Only toward the end of the conversation did I learn that the young man I had chosen to confront with the “N” word was the very student whose room had been vandalized the night before.

As I was walking to my car after class, this young black student ran up to me, hugged me, and said, “Thank you. You’ve completely changed the way I see what happened. My parents had decided that I should leave school, but I’m going to talk to them. I think I should stay.”

We feel victimized because we choose to and because we’re taught to. When we understand that, we also realize that we can learn not to feel victimized and learn not to act like victims. The more we learn about Real Love and victimhood, the greater the real power we enjoy. 

The Bondage of Victimhood: The Specific Dangers to Black People

Now I want to speak in greater detail about the specific dangers of victimhood to black people.

It is a fact that black people were victimized terribly during the time of slavery, which ended in 1863. It is also a fact that after slavery ended, racial prejudice continued to cause harm to blacks. This is undisputed. What is also indisputable is that throughout history many groups have been terribly victimized because of their race, culture, ethnicity, or beliefs. For many years the Chinese were brought to this country under conditions very little different from slavery, and they were put to work in the most menial and dangerous jobs available—hence the phrase, “a Chinaman’s chance in hell.” During a period of overwhelming immigration, the Irish were originally treated in a most inhospitable manner by those who already inhabited this country. For many years the Japanese were brought here to do menial work, and then when World War II broke out, they were put in concentration camps for the duration of the war. The Jews have been hunted down and persecuted over the face of the earth for two thousand years. The Mormons were robbed, raped, murdered, and driven from the states of Missouri and Illinois—with the encouragement of the legal authorities—until they found a place to live in the barren desert of Utah. The Vietnamese were hardly welcomed here with open arms as they immigrated in recent years. And we must never forget that this entire country was stolen from the Native Americans, who were very nearly wiped from existence by disease, starvation, bullets, dislocation, and deceit.

And although some members of these groups have complained about their treatment, have sought legal redress for their wrongs, and even established organizations to prevent further abuse, not one of these groups as a whole has focused on victimhood as a solution to its problems. They don’t demand that society be responsible for their well-being. Instead the members of these groups—generally speaking, not universally—have simply relied on education and hard work and other means to establish themselves and to obtain a measure of prosperity and happiness.

Blacks tend to dominate statistics in violence, illiteracy, unwed mothers, drug use, and other problems not because of how they are treated by white people, but because there is a widespread black culture of victimhood. On black radio, on black television, from black politicians, in black comedy, the nearly uniform cry is, Look what they’ve done to us. Look what they haven’t done for us. And it’s not our fault. Regrettably, these phrases are right out of the Victim Handbook, and as long as black people see themselves as victims, they will remain slaves—by their own choice—to whatever people or race or organization they blame for their condition. This is true for victims who are white or Asian or Sikh or Muslim, and it is true for victims who are black. Black victims are no different from victims of any other race or other description.

This—victimhood—is why uncounted government programs haven’t helped the overall condition of impoverished blacks. Victimhood is the reason that studies have determined that the more money that is poured into improving predominantly black problems, the worse they become. The more you give a victim, the more he is confirmed in his belief that he is a victim, and then he is actually weakened, after which he will do less and demand more.