Any time you hear that opening (and unfortunately, I have)
you can be assured that person is a racist. No one admits to it. Not the tea
party people with their hateful signs, not the elected officials who send out
racial slurs in emails and call them harmless jokes. And many of those are the
same people who justify the senseless death of Trayvon Martin. “I’m not a
racist, but when someone goes walking around late at night wearing a hoodie,
looking suspicious…”
No matter how it is denied, racism is alive and well, and in
fact, it is thriving in the lizard-brain.
Let me explain what I mean by lizard brain. The basal
ganglia, termed “the Reptilian Complex” by American neuroscientist Paul Mc
Lean, is the most base and simplistic part of our brain. This structure is
shared by reptiles and birds, and was probably all we had before we evolved. Mc
Lean theorized it was “responsible for species typical instinctual behaviors
involved in aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays”.
We are all capable of operating from this lowest functioning part of our
brains. We are also capable of functioning higher.
In our lizard brain, we are fearful and territorial.
Advertisers know this. Media knows this. The Pharma industry knows this.
Politicians know this. They push the fear button to keep us following them like zombies.
In our lizard brain, we are tribal. We attack people at
sporting events. We fear people of other races, religions, socioeconomic
standing. We move away to gated societies to keep “the others” out.
In the military, they train soldiers to kill by making the
enemy subhuman - “the other”…the “one you should fear”. It’s how Hitler was able
to convince German citizens to look the other way while he committed genocide.
The vitriolic right-wing has done a bang-up job of making
our President “the other” - “the one you should fear”. They appeal to
uneducated, unworldly people, and go straight for the lizard brain. He is a
Muslim. He is a Kenyan. His birth certificate is fake. He pals around with
terrorists. I mean, really, when has any
other president been subjected to such nonsense? Being called a LIAR in
Congress? Having a congresswoman angrily point a finger in your face?
Let’s call it what it is. He is BLACK. And the vitriolic right wingers are sending the message: Watch out white
people, for President Obama is “the other”. Its this kind of racism,
directed even toward our President- the most powerful leader in the free world-
that filters down to a young kid like Trayvon, walking home with some Skittles
in his pocket.
Its no wonder that citizens who watch FEAR news all day long
are feeling threatened. Their lizard brains are conditioned to fear the other, to protect
themselves. I wonder what cable news Zimmerman follows. I think I
can make an educated guess…
The only way to free ourselves from this hateful way of
being, the only way to stop more innocent children from being senselessly shot
down in the street, is to evolve. We must open our minds and listen. We must educate ourselves and others, to move our
thinking to a higher place.
The next time you get one of those hateful, bigoted emails
from your weird uncle, just remember, he’s coming from his lizard brain. The best thing we can do for Lizard-brain is not to engage
with him or get angry (that’s where lizard brain thrives) but instead to
expose him to something different (beauty, culture, love) that can only be
processed in a different part of his brain.
When he makes a hateful post on your facebook page, post a picture like this on his:
It’s up to us to rise above our lizard brains. We have to be
the ones who educate. Be the ones who encourage tolerance. Be the ones who put
positive, enlightening information into the world every day.
And whatever we do, we can’t make lizard-brains our “other” – the ones we should fear, because then we
are operating from our own lizard brains.
