every minority's law of attraction dilemma
All my life, I have heard the whole "you have to work twice as hard" shtick from my family. Growing up as a Black child, you really can't get out of someone in your family sitting you down and telling you that the world treats you differently because of your skin color. When I became an adult and had my own Black child, I thought it was my duty to tell him he would one day be a Black man living in America and that he needs to understand that there's racist people and racist institutions out there that will take advantage of him if he is not vigilant. I gave him the "you have to work twice as hard" speech-- probably before he was in 1st grade.
What can you do when your kid tells you he notices the difference in how they treat the white children and how they treat him and other children of color? When experience confirms the notion that we are on unequal footing time and time again, it's hard to deny. History confirms it, the news damn sure confirms it. Can't get around it, can't go over it, can't go under it. We just acknowledge it, right? Racial inequality is like that party guest who gets sloppy drunk and sits with your family in the living room while the parties over, the mess is cleaned, and everyones staring back at him in their pajamas. We all want him to go but he will not.
And now, enter the Law of Attraction stuff: The first thing I learned about law of attraction was "like attracts like". Simple statement that can be unpacked a lot, but it basically means similarly vibrating things in this world attract each other. Everything is vibrational--common places vibration can come from are feelings, thoughts, words, and actions. Well, if I am telling my Black baby that the playing field is unequal, and he has to work twice as hard as his friend that's white and filling his mind with all these things about race....what the fuck is that doing to the way he is attracting things in his life and what he will BELIEVE he can attract into his life???
I want to know what it would be like if all the Black or minority parents would stop telling their kids "they see us differently" and "we have to work twice as hard"? What if we changed the narrative on racism for our children? What if the reason the specter of racism isn't going away because we're not allowing it to go away by packaging up all the pain, and struggle and consequence in a pretty box and passing it down to the next generation. I think its bout time to start something new--
What are the limits of what we can attract into our communities, or the bridges we may be able to build and heal if we build up the "you can do anything" narrative and minimize the "the world is against you" one as much as we humanly can?
What can you do when your kid tells you he notices the difference in how they treat the white children and how they treat him and other children of color? When experience confirms the notion that we are on unequal footing time and time again, it's hard to deny. History confirms it, the news damn sure confirms it. Can't get around it, can't go over it, can't go under it. We just acknowledge it, right? Racial inequality is like that party guest who gets sloppy drunk and sits with your family in the living room while the parties over, the mess is cleaned, and everyones staring back at him in their pajamas. We all want him to go but he will not.
And now, enter the Law of Attraction stuff: The first thing I learned about law of attraction was "like attracts like". Simple statement that can be unpacked a lot, but it basically means similarly vibrating things in this world attract each other. Everything is vibrational--common places vibration can come from are feelings, thoughts, words, and actions. Well, if I am telling my Black baby that the playing field is unequal, and he has to work twice as hard as his friend that's white and filling his mind with all these things about race....what the fuck is that doing to the way he is attracting things in his life and what he will BELIEVE he can attract into his life???
I want to know what it would be like if all the Black or minority parents would stop telling their kids "they see us differently" and "we have to work twice as hard"? What if we changed the narrative on racism for our children? What if the reason the specter of racism isn't going away because we're not allowing it to go away by packaging up all the pain, and struggle and consequence in a pretty box and passing it down to the next generation. I think its bout time to start something new--
What are the limits of what we can attract into our communities, or the bridges we may be able to build and heal if we build up the "you can do anything" narrative and minimize the "the world is against you" one as much as we humanly can?
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