How does a society right the wrong of racism? Can it be done? No one can change history or wipe out the evils of what has been committed in the past. But there is a legacy of racism that still persists today. It is invisible in many respects, yet it is like an energy that pervades a room after an argument. Everyone can feel the tension to one degree or another, each reacting to it in one’s own individual way, shaping his or her behavior, both consciously and unconsciously.

Racism is not an object that we can hold in our hands and observe. We can only see the effects of what it produces. It is perhaps a natural impulse of all human beings to look to the outside world or to the physical environment when faced with a problem that needs to be fixed or addressed. A government, for example, can build housing projects or create social programs as was done in the 60′s in an attempt to right the wrong of several hundred years of cruel and unjust treatment of an entire race of people. Yet while this kind of reconciliation has its place, it does little to grapple with the core problem that generated racism to begin with and that still acts as a troublesome current beneath the surface of our daily lives.

We must look then to the source of racism and begin to unearth its roots, tugging and digging until the ideas and beliefs that are its nutrients are exposed and unable to give it life any longer.

The Origin of Racism

In the Western World racism can be said to have its birth with the beginnings of the slave trade, but the genesis of its practice goes back much further in time. Its beginnings lie in the minds of men and the moral judgments placed on color that were (and still are) applied where they don’t belong. Racism has its birth in our ideas of right and wrong, and our association of these judgments with concepts of light and darkness and good and evil. Our individual beliefs form our experience and collectively those beliefs shape our society and culture. It is time to examine these ideas both individually and en masse and come to terms with the errors in our thinking. Righting the wrong of racism must begin with a reconciliation of the conflicts of those beliefs and ideas that give racism its energy and life.