Post influenced by the News
“My brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side –a little happier, anyway– and children and all animals, if you yourself were nobler than you are now. It’s all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin.” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)
Bethany Webster suggests that we transform the self-defensive stance of “I’m not racist” into a widespread, activated stance of “I’m committed to undoing racism in myself and in my culture”
There are many forms of explicit racism and racist attitudes can manifest in different ways including xenophobia or stereotypical assumptions. However, aversive or implicit racism can also drive our behaviours and create lens through which we perceive others. Unconscious beliefs operate below our conscious awareness and influence our behaviour or thinking and without our being aware of the process most of the time. Most of us have absorbed societal and familial beliefs and attitudes at a very early age, which play out in childhood and adulthood and determine our views of the Other, or we may project on others our own negative experiences of being discriminated against. Therefore, it makes sense to take steps towards facing our blind spots and creating cultural competence and harmony during the early years. The booklet below contains ideas on how we can become aware of biases through self-reflection and learning about other cultures and ways of being and also how to create more harmonious, inclusive and cultural competent learning contexts for young children: Cultural Connection Booklet for pre-school and school services at: https://childaustralia.org.au/…/Cultural-Connections.pdf
Desmon Tutu refers to Ubuntu which says that ‘we cannot exist as a human being in isolation. We are interconnected. We are family. If you are not well, I am not well. When Ubuntu is your core value you recognize your shared humanity. You cannot live in Ubuntu and violate the dignity or humanity of another…….
Ubuntu does not say that we will not have differences rather it says we will look at our differences from a framework of reconciliation and renewal. I have said before and will continue to say until my own last breath, there is no situation that is without hope, there is no conflict that cannot be resolved, and there is no person that is incapable of transformation. Ubuntu means that when we walk into a room full of people we immediately look at the ways we are similar, not the ways in which we are different…..
Article one of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” This is Ubuntu. We are bound together in our quest for freedom in all its forms, connection in all its possibilities, and in our basic need for our dignity to be inviolate……
We are only people through other people. We are more alike than not. We are truly interconnected, and as a global family there are no true or real boundaries among nations, among religions, among territories. Every man, woman, and child wants to live, to love, to be free, and to be happy. (From an article by Desmond Tutu: The Politics of Ubuntu at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/the-politics-of-ubuntu_b_5125854.html