Kingdom culture, one race, one ethnicity…

One of the most beautiful things for me to see in this world is the mixing and integration of people from different ethnic backgrounds and how we find ways to relate to one another even if we may not be able to speak the same language. Conversely, one of the things that brings great sorrow to my heart is seeing people separate themselves from others on the basis of socially fabricated ethnic groups.

A strong attachment to one’s cultural heritage or ethnicity often causes frictions and tensions to arise and can result in an unnatural divide among humanity. One time in a clothing store with my mum, as we were talking to each other in Spanish, an older, white, English lady told us that we should really be speaking in English because this is an English-speaking country. I knew that what this lady said was wrong; however, I was not old enough to properly verbalise what was going on. Now I can see how this lady’s ignorance led her to say something not only rude but also historically incorrect. England has a long history of conquests and subsequent integration of cultures. In the eighth century, Vikings from Scandinavia conquered England, bringing with them their old Norse language, which, over time, mixed with our old English language. Then, when William the Conqueror defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, French became one of Britain’s official languages for around 300 years. But this is not a history lesson. The point I am making is that the lady in the shop’s statement was not corroborated by any historical evidence; her statement derived purely from her personal feelings towards hearing another language being spoken in a predominantly English-speaking country. Cultural ignorance is sometimes hard to recognise, though. Even if this lady’s statement were to be proved wrong right in front of her, I doubt her personal perception of people speaking foreign languages in England would change. Her comment was driven by ignorance not fact, which is something that is hard to change. It was for this reason – as many in similar situations do – that we chose not to say anything and instead moved on, because we knew how ridiculous her comment was and what effort it would take to change her mind.

Ignorance simply means a lack of knowledge, education and awareness. Historically, a combination of all three of these things has been the basis of racial discrimination. Racism is then the product of ignorance. Dr Myles Munroe once said, ‘Where the purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable,’ and so it is with people: where the identity of a person is not known, abuse of the person is inevitable. Often we think of racism as being an active act of discrimination against another person because of their physical or cultural differences. However, racism really starts as a thought or, more specifically, an implicit personal bias in the mind. As I wrote in a previous article, the scientist Samuel Morton already had a prejudice against those of black and Asian ethnicities and tried to validate his racism through science. Pro-slavery institutions in America already had a prejudice about the inferiority of black people in society and found ways to make their desired treatment towards them legal, creating the concept of slavery. It all starts in the mind. The post-Civil War Jim Crow laws were not introduced based on any scientific fact; they were only socially and legally acceptable due to the normality of African-American oppression – an image ingrained in people’s minds since slavery. This was the way life had been for many centuries: white people had privileges that black people were not allowed – even everyday things like sitting at the front of a bus. It was people like Rosa Parks, who started highlighting that these everyday things should never have been socially – and certainly not legally – acceptable, that finally produced large-scale change. An act so seemingly small as exercising her human right to sit at the front of a bus and boycotting buses that would not allow her to made her one of the most prominent figures of racial justice. The US congress dubbed her the ‘first lady of civil rights’ and the ‘mother of the freedom movement’. As a result of racist scientists and nonsensical laws, the oppression of black people had become the norm. Even with the abolition of the Jim Crow laws in 1968 seemingly giving both black and white people equal opportunities, the damage had already been done psychologically – in the minds of the public – and systemically.

Many of the social injustices we have witnessed throughout history, and even in the present day, usually started with an ignorant thought in the mind, which then escalated to some of the most outrageously evil acts the world has ever seen. The Holocaust, for example, was the result of one man’s skewed thinking about what the ideal human race should look like. Slavery across the world was legalised because of an institution’s prejudiced thoughts about black people. The apartheid (Afrikaans for ‘apartness’) was the result of a political party’s beliefs in ‘apartness’ between white and non-white citizens. All these events took place because of someone’s ignorant way of thinking.

This is why I am so passionate about the articles I write. In each article, I try to unpick and address the psychological damage that has occurred in our brains as a result of experiencing the worst acts of humankind that have unfolded over many centuries. Cultural ignorance, racism, stereotyping and prejudice are learnt behaviours and they have become so ingrained in society that we are now not only talking about overt and obvious racist attacks, but also implicit racism, with a person perhaps not knowing whether they have a racial bias until tested. You can actually find this test online by searching for the IAT – the implicit association test.

It is my belief that a child learns their behaviour from their parents, experiences and upbringing; it is my belief that bad behaviour is more a product of environment than any predisposition. As a society, we have learnt a lot of bad things that we need to unlearn. We need to unlearn behaviours we don’t even realise we’ve learnt and we need to unpick the root of cultural ignorance. Just like with a medical problem, you may be able to supress the symptoms, but your body will never completely heal until the root cause has been dealt with.

We need to get back to seeing each other as the biological, spiritual family that we are, as highlighted in my previous two articles in this trilogy. I wonder if Hitler would have changed his course of action if he saw the people he was killing as his brothers and sisters; I wonder how many more years Martin Luther King would have lived if the people who assassinated him realised that they came from the same lineage. I wonder how many more African-American grandfathers and grandmothers would be alive today if people saw them as family instead of dangerous animals that needed to be tamed; I wonder how much more Nelson Mandela could have done in his life if the people who incarcerated him saw him as a brother not a threat. And I wonder how differently the policemen who took the lives of Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd would have acted if they viewed their victims as their relatives. We may not all be brother and sister directly, but somewhere down the line all our ancestral roots cross. We often talk about treating and loving one another as brother and sister, especially in the church, but are our actions reflecting the way we would treat our close family relatives or even friends? In any situation, instead of emphasising what divides us, one of the things we can do as a society is find practical ways to relate more to one another.

Written by Laura McBride Galarza