Navigating the Topics of Race and Culture Now

To talk about race requires the speaker to function from a non-judgmental, interested point of view, with an awareness of the divisiveness present in the human condition. The problem isn’t one rooted in skin color, but the hideous and unrelenting competition amongst people of color and non people of color, and those races that are despised for no other reason than that they are not the same.

Would you feel different if every time someone brought up race or culture, you could listen to the speakers judgements or inquires into why a people might choose something as despicable as self hatred, poverty, or lack of independence without your heart racing or blood pressure rising? What happens when someone who feels with every core of their being that they are doing the best they can is asked to make a different choice?

What else is possible? What would it take to hear what the other side says or suggests without huff puffing, and throwing in the towel so that a workable solution can show up that might create and engender peace, kindness, and greater clarity?

What if we chose our friends based on the desire to be with people who excite and titillate us, and make us happy, and not to resist societal standards, or just because everyone around us would like to see us choose people from our own race!

Do you have someone in your family you loathe? How do you deal with it? Is anyone dealing with it all? Or do you subconsciously push aside the desire to strangle them at every family gathering? Do you have suggestions of ways to work with difficult people, and how to have hard discussions? What would it take for communicating cross-culturally to be easy, and to have conversations that increase our level of respect for one another, and infuse a sense of awe in each’s universe? How much more fun would that be?

Asking questions is the place to start. Asking questions to others about their culture. What kind of foods do they like to eat? What holidays they like to celebrate? What do they like to wear? What kind of music do they listen to? Maybe they’ll invite you over for dinner or ask you to be in a Quinceanera like I was at fifteen. Participating in cultural events, even if you're not apart of the culture can be so much fun. Does your significant other celebrate a religious holiday you don’t really understand? Remember how it feels to be there with them, hanging out, getting to know each other, riding the high of infatuation? You're kind of standing there like, “Wow, this is interesting, I wonder what they do that for, cool, is any of this relevant to me?” That’s a lot like looking at everything that occurs in the ceremony from an interested point of view.

What’s one thing we all like to do, everyone from every culture, race, and ethnicity? Shop! Acquire things. I know a couple, Steve and Chutisa Bowman. Chustisa is Cambodian and Steve is Australian. Together with their bright and innovative ideas they have created magnanimously successful businesses. Listen to them talk about benevolent capitalism, and how capitalism can work for the benefit of everyone involved, and be a continual contribution to the expansion of everyone’s life; rich, poor, black, or white.

After all it is important that we all get along if we must share the planet together. It’s time we begin engaging conversations with the other from a totally different place. It might be a place that you only get to when you’ve let go of the need to be right, or maybe when you're in love. It stems from the desire to share with another, and participate in their life because they’re just cool. What would that be like?