TRANSCRIPT

If I'm not conscious about something that's happening around me, I don't have to do anything about it. So if you don't accept that you're privileged as a white man or woman - if you don't accept it - you don't have to change it. So, if you want to stay in the dark then stay in the dark...and that's what they do - they stay in the dark instead of accepting how they can do better, live better, be better. It's time to change, guys. It's not working. Take personal responsibility. Get off your couch. Go out there and put out the fire that's burning right next door to you.

“Nothing You Do Matters Unless What You Do Matters”

I’m Amadon DellErba and this is “Get Real or Die Trying” 

What up, Tribe, Amadon DellErba here.  This is episode 10...yes!, of my Get Real or Die Trying podcast.  It's a good experience to be able to commit and just bust these out weekly...so this is 10. Today I'm going to talk about white privilege. Obviously, with what's going on in this country, it's quite a topic. It's on the hearts and minds of not just all Americans, but really across the whole globe.

What is white privilege? I don't think I want to so much touch on that. I think I'm going to talk about what we can do to overcome and to change our consciousness, and how we can be better global citizens, speak from my own experience and talk about my perceptions, my understanding, my lack of understanding, and my ideas around the concept, in general, of privilege. And, of course, the concept of inequality, police brutality, the perceptions in this country.  I'm not here to say what's right and wrong and to really get into racism and black and white and all that.  I'd more rather like to approach this from a spiritual consciousness point of view.  I'd like to approach it from humanity, from our hearts, from our higher chakras, from our higher understanding, and the lack of love that we as human beings can have for our fellow human beings. 

So let me start with this here, the basic little bit of my context for you of my opinions.  I was involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement that happened in September of 2011.

I went up to Zuccotti park in October, a month after it was occupied, and I had the privilege (not the same as white privilege) I had the honor and the privilege, and I felt very blessed to have many conversations with people of all colors, all walks of life...everybody in this park - the rich even, the poor, the unseen, the unheard, artists, musicians, brown people, black people, white people, all of it.  And I was blessed to have this experience because it was able to help shape some of my opinions and perceptions of how these people feel being citizens in this country, and that it was illuminating that it is different than how I feel as a white man.  And, I then was able to travel across the entire country and hit a lot of the major cities. So I was in New York; DC; Boston; Philadelphia; Chicago; Los Angeles; Long Beach; Anaheim; Denver, Colorado; Phoenix, Arizona - I probably missed some - and I was traveling during the Occupy, the height of it, and going to these parks and these places that were occupied by people, and I was involved in these marches.  I was arrested, I was sprayed with pepper spray.  I was involved in all of it, and that was a valuable experience for me too, to feel and to experience that and to be a part of that culture, and to make my voice heard and to be seen, and all of that.

One of the protests that I went to was actually in Anaheim, California. It was in 2012, in July of 2012, and it was a protest exclusively against police brutality. And at the time it was focused around the racism of police officers killing and arresting and abusing and beating Hispanics in Anaheim, California, which is right near Disneyland, for those of you who don't know. And it was really about...there was a couple of young Hispanic men who were unarmed and unjustly - well, there is no really justice in killing - they were killed and they were...it created an uproar (and rightfully so) in the community.  And so, similar to what's happening right now in the country, people took to the streets. So I flew out there from Arizona with my crew to document this, to tell the stories of the oppressed, to film them and to capture what their message was, what their story was, what they wanted to say.  And it was, it was a powerful experience - it was an emotional experience. And any...I know for me personally (I can only speak from my personal experience) I haven't had to endure the oppression, the racism, and the boxed-in mindset that minority people experience in this country. It's a fact. What do we do as white people to accept that and then to educate around it and to, you know, not level the playing field with our black and brown and our colored brothers, and our brothers and sisters, but to really acknowledge what they've gone through - throughout history, throughout time - and what they're still going through. How do we as brothers and sisters have compassion, have understanding? To me, compassion is an element I'm gonna be touching on here because I think, in order to overcome these things, it's not so much about a political mindset, and it's not so much about the consciousness of understanding the systemic racism and the history of this country. We need to overcome all of that in the way we were raised in our culture. We need to overcome it all with higher spiritual values - compassion, brotherhood and sisterhood of man, love. I don't mean to sound fluffy and ideological there, but that's basically the fact. 

But let's circle back to Anaheim. We were at all of these protests during the Occupy movement and all across the country to talk about something called the Spiritualution movement. And, to me, that is a solution.  And the Spiritualution movement, it's really the merge of the word spiritual and revolution - I’ve talked about it before on my podcast - and spiritual and solution, a spiritual revolution, a spiritual solution to the problems that we face as a humanity.  This term and this concept and this movement was started by Gabriel of Urantia over 25 years ago in the early nineties.  And it's not so much a raising of arms and going out to the streets and protesting. The Spiritualution movement is about a spiritual awakening individually; but happening individually, yet on a collective consciousness globally...happening with people all over the world - A Spiritualution movement where people have a spiritual consciousness shift.  And that is what needs to happen. 

Yes, the protesting in the streets is important. Yes, educating is important.  But does it change people? Does it change the person who has wrong thinking immediately? That's debatable.  I have my opinions from my own experience with traveling in this country, being in the street, holding the signs, screaming, running from the police, being arrested by the police. I have my own experiences that that's all I can talk about. And did it change people? I'm not sure. But what does change people is a spiritual consciousness shift. And so I was traveling the country with my crew of media men, and we were capturing these stories, and we were sharing and having conversations around spiritual revolution, about the country, about oppression, about inequality, about racism, about all of these things, and how do we change that? There was a lot of young people, which was really good to see because right now in this country there's a lot of apathy in the millennials and the young people. And so, I have all of that experience that helped shift my opinions. 

The reason why I say all that is because I'm not here to pretend like I'm an expert on white privilege.  I'm not here to pretend like I'm an expert on oppression and being a minority and growing up in situations in inner cities or reservations of Native Americans, or any minority culture.  I'm not here to say that I know what you feel. I am here to say that I want to know.  I am here to say that I have compassion. And I am here to say that I've tried to know, and I've tried to have compassion by inserting myself into these situations in America to sympathize and to listen, listen, and to understand and to hear from these people and to learn their stories and to have their pain and their suffering penetrate my soul and help me to change my consciousness to understand them, then to help somebody else understand. And that's what we need to do. And that's compassion. 

Back to Anaheim, California. We see in our country right now these militarized police.  And it's not a joke; this was happening in 2012 and I saw it myself.  And it's very intimidating when you see heavily armed military grade weapons and armory, armored vehicles rolling down the streets, and these police with assault rifles, and weapons.  And they're rolling; it's intimidating. And that's what they do; they try to intimidate the people.  I saw it in Anaheim and I saw all across this country.  But I was surprised, especially in Anaheim because, you know, at Occupy you saw the police come out and you saw them in their riot gear, which was different than the militarized police that came out in like, you know, they look like they are in Afghanistan, basically.  Which I thought was interesting because that protest was actually about police brutality, and so they were more heavily armed and they were expecting more violence, probably, towards the police. 

But basically from my experience in hitting these massive protests all over the country years ago, they always, they do start out peaceful.  And I just want to talk about what's happening in this country and about...are these protestors peaceful or not, or what's happening?  And I think most people know this, but not everybody does...the majority - 90% or more - of the people who are in the streets are there to communicate their message. Yes, they're frustrated. Yes, they're angry...possibly yelling and screaming, holding their signs. That's okay. They should be, they have a right to be. Are they there for violence? No. Are they there to riot and burn down buildings and police cars? No. 90% of them, no, probably more. Again, this is my experience from actually doing it.  I'm not trying to say that I am out there right now and that I know.  This is my experience based off of the 10 major marches I did in a couple year period during the Occupy movement. 

So, you always have the 10% of individuals who come out and take advantage of the protest to express their frustrations and their anger in a different way.  And the violence starts and the police, you know, start cracking down.  But most of these marches start out peaceful and they remain peaceful until the very end.   What I saw is that there's always a point at the end of the day when the crowd is supposed to disperse, whether it's because of a curfew, which I experienced as well, or whether it's because they've been marching all day blocking traffic and the authorities decide that it's over. I’m not saying it's right, but they make a decision - we're going to disperse the crowd, this is enough, it's been 10 hours, has been five hours, whatever - and they disperse the crowd. That's when the violence starts. But the media likes to portray this situation to the masses who are watching it on their TVs at home - who've never been in the streets, never experienced it - like that the whole thing is just chaos and that it's just, they show all the clips of the violence, and the tear gas going off, and the rubber bullets going off, and the arrests happening, and the flames, and the fire, and the riot police shoving with their batons, and all this as they show that little segment.

Back to Anaheim...that experience talking to and interviewing Sonja Hernandez, who was the sister of a 17 year old young man who was murdered by the police in Anaheim - which was really the spark of the protest in 2012 that I was at - speaking to her, interviewing her, seeing the pain and the loss in her eyes helped me to understand that no matter how much compassion I have, I'm not in her shoes.  I'm not in the shoes of a black man my age, I'm not in the shoes of Hispanic man my age, I'm not in the shoes of a Native American man - an indigenous man of any culture - my age.  And so pretending to be is not the solution for us white men.  And acting, you know…I think some men in their attempt, and women, us - white people - it's a very difficult subject to talk about because anything you say can be turned against you, and you can offend.

And I'm just speaking from my heart and I'll take the risk of offending.  I'll take the risk of being misunderstood, to speak my heart. And so it's not my job to pretend like I understand. But it is my job to understand.  And here's the difference - pretending is kind of overcompensating, trying to act like you've experienced what they've experienced because you're trying to have solidarity with a minority group.  And I'm not just talking about black people...let's just talk about minorities and oppression against minorities in general. Understanding is different than pretending because you actually listen to them and then you decide how their stories, how their pain, is going to educate and inspire and shift the way you think, and the way you approach and to help others to approach an understanding of how we live in this country.

White privilege, racism. How does that relate to this whole country? This country was stolen from indigenous people, built on the backs of slaves, black slaves, other slaves, too.  The East Coast - New York and these cities - were built by indentured servants from Ireland in order to get over here and get safe passage on a boat and to pay for the boat ride because they were poor and they couldn't...they had to come and they had to sign, and they were indentured servants for a year or two, three years, when they first came over.  I mean the city was built on the backs of slaves, Chinese slaves. But, of course, Black Africans that were taken from their land and brought over - we all know the history...I'm not a history teacher, I'm not here to talk to you about that - but we do, as American people and as white Americans have to acknowledge how this country came about.  We have to acknowledge the sins of our ancestors. 

And so we as Americans have to take a minute here to understand that, okay, this country was built on the backs of slaves.  What does that mean today?  What does that mean right now?

How does that inform our decision making right now?  I think it's consciousness, man. It's spiritual consciousness.  We have to separate ourselves from a mindset of the privilege because, whether we think we have the white privilege thinking or not, most white Americans have it and they're not aware of it because it's a subconscious thought pattern.  It's a subconscious wrong way and perception.  And we do it because it's reinforced in the media. It's reinforced in our culture. It's reinforced that minority groups - and I'm saying minority groups, not just black people because it's really brown people too who suffer the same issues.  And by saying that, I'm in no way discounting the Black Lives Matter and what's going on in this country right now and the topic and the narrative and discussion that we're all having around black people and the racism they've endured.  You can't say it...this is such a touchy subject. I've probably already offended people. It just is what it is. I'm not here, I'm not here to offend, so I just speak from my heart. 

But I know that we as white people have to take the responsibility to change our consciousness about racism.  And it starts with this spiritual attempt to dive into the brotherhood of man.  The brotherhood of all man. Now that seems, “Oh, that's cheesy and how does that relate?” but it's really not like this  farfetched, cheesy, idealistic, utopian thing. If each individual took a minute to contemplate what it would be like to actually see each and every person on this planet - regardless of skin color, regardless of religion, regardless of anything - as their brother, as their sister, there would be a whole different approach.  If you have a brother or sister right now, a blood brother or sister, you see them a certain way. You have an unconscious loyalty to them; they’re your family, they’re your blood.  You treat them a certain way.  You accept them. You have more tolerance of them. That acceptance and that tolerance should extend past cultural boundaries, past the color of skin, past the color of...whatever, it just needs to, it's a spiritual consciousness. Do millions of Americans lack that consciousness? Yes. Are millions of Americans racist?  Yes. Look at our country. It's led by a man who openly dictates and speaks with racism. If you're trying to deny that there's racism in this country, you are years, hundreds of years behind in your consciousness. Sorry, you are. You're stuck and you're wrong and you're part of the problem. Why is it that white men can strap up in assault rifles and protest on the Capitol where they did a few weeks ago - the isolation where they can protest the lockdown and, of course, the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms - and not one police officer shows up. Media comes, takes photos. There's not one order to disperse. You have hundreds of men with assault rifles standing there doing their protest.

Can you imagine if hundreds of black men with assault rifles showed up at the Capitol?  What do you think would happen?  If you are here to deny that there wouldn't be a police force and that there wouldn't be panic and that the perception the media would paint to the rest of the world watching...that it wouldn't be one of basically bullsh*t.  If you're here to deny that, you're stuck; you're stuck and you're wrong in your consciousness. And so, I'm embarrassed to be an American, to be honest with you, many times.  I'm not embarrassed to be what this country was founded on, and the original principles, and the Founding Fathers and the true Constitution and the ideals of what this country was supposed to be and meant to be, and can be, and is still in some ways.  But I'm embarrassed to be a part of the American culture of opulism, of over-consumption, of selfishness, of foolish nationalistic thinking, of the walls and the boundaries that we live in every day in our minds and hearts that separate us. I mean, we are sitting on stolen land.  Some of you still live in castles that were built by slaves, brown and black people. I mean, please just accept it. Accept what it is and stop denying it. I'm speaking, I'm not preaching to the choir here of people who know this. I'm talking to someone who might stumble across this podcast and this video who's having a hard time accepting that. I think you have to tap into the love in your heart for another man and woman, another person around you, and have a culture and understanding of community.

The privilege that we have as white people is subconscious, and that's why it's so hard to teach to people.  Because you just grow up and you have it. You don't realize you have it. And you have to start being educated. And there's these great little videos and there's great educational websites, and there's a lot of people who can speak on it more eloquently than I can.  And so I encourage you to go and learn about white privilege.

But let's talk about the privilege of acceptance; the privilege that we have to accept one another, to have tolerance.  If we circle back to my comment earlier about how you actually treat your blood brother and sister, your biological blood brother and sister...you're more forgiving, you treat them with more tolerance, you treat them with more acceptance. You know, you accept them for who they are because they’re your family.  We need to accept everybody for who they are.  It's a spiritual consciousness - back to Spiritualution; spiritual revolution, a raising of awareness, a raising of consciousness.

But anyways, it's not about white and black, my friends; it's about the brotherhood of man.  And I want to read a quote from a book called The URANTIA Book that I think is the most conducive learning spiritual tool for us to unify our consciousness as humanity and to have a spiritual understanding together. This is from Paper 12 of The URANTIA Book. This section is called, The Part and the Whole:

“The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man present the paradox of the part and the whole on the level of personality. God loves each individual as an individual child in the heavenly family. Yet God thus loves every individual; He is no respecter of persons, and the universality of His love brings into being a relationship of the whole, the universal brotherhood.

“The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity. The Father’s love glorifies each child of God, illuminating each member of the celestial family, sharply silhouetting the unique nature of each personal being against the impersonal levels that lie outside the fraternal circuit of the Father of all. The love of God strikingly portrays the transcendent value of each will creature, unmistakably reveals the high value which the Universal Father has placed upon each and every one of His children from the highest creator personality of Paradise status to the lowest personality of will dignity among the savage tribes of men in the dawn of the human species on some evolutionary world of time and space.”

So, what does that mean?  Well, let's really just synthesize it down to a simple statement - the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.  How do we get to a place on this planet to accept one planetary family?  A quote by Gabriel of Urantia, “One God, One Planetary Family.”  How do we get to a place of “spiritual unity without uniformity?”  (Another concept from The URANTIA Book.)  How do we get to a place of collective consciousness?  How can I attach myself to a Muslim across the world, who believes in Allah, and have similarities in our belief?  And synthesize?  And respect what he believes, and not feel that he has to believe what I believe because we both believe in a loving Creator?  Does it really matter what you call the Creator?  Does the dogma and the principles and the little teachings and everything that trickles down from the Creator, and how we go about worshiping that same Creator?  Does it really matter?  Can't we find balance and harmony on the key point that we believe in a Creator?  And just recognize the difference, but celebrate the beauty of unity?  Why can't we do that as a humanity?

What is it that white people can do?  What are the answers?  Are there solutions?  What are the actions that we can take?  I think we need to pursue compassion.  What does that mean?  It means taking the time to hear their stories, to understand, to talk to them, because we grew up in a different culture - the minority people. It's just the truth. Historically, our ancestry is different. We do not suffer from transgenerational trauma. Native American, indigenous people all over this world have.  Black people have.  Pretty much any minority group have.  The transgenerational trauma, I believe, is a real thing from my own personal experience and having conversations.  You see, as a white person, my grandfather, my great grandfather, my great, great grandfather, et cetera, my lineage, my ancestry, did not come from slavery and oppression.  My lands were not taken.  I was not taken from my Homeland.  And so this trauma is passed down generation to generation. The injustice; because justice was never served, correction never truly happened for these people and the trauma is passed down and the injustice continues.  And because white people grow up in such a different understanding consciously, in a different consciousness sector, than oppressed minorities, they don't relate.

When I saw that video of Floyd being murdered by the police officers, crying out for help, I was enraged.  I mean, I just, I don't know any other way to say, but if he was white, that wouldn't have happened.  And so that's the question. Why is it that that wouldn't have happened?  We all have to ask ourselves.  We all have to come up with the answers, and then we have to do something with the answers.  Why wouldn't that have happened if he was white?  Why would those officers not have tackled him and kept persisting on holding him down like that?  It's because they had a consciousness in them that they felt like he was a criminal.  They had a consciousness in them that they felt like he was less than they were, than they are. They had a consciousness of feeling superior to that man, to that human being, to that soul, to that father of a six year old child.  They felt like they were superior and better than him, that they didn't have to listen to his cries of anguish.  They didn't have to listen to him begging for them to stop. They didn't have to acknowledge his suffering. They did not feel like they had to acknowledge his suffering in that moment, or even historically. That that man came from an ancestry of suffering,  that his ancestors were stolen from their home by white men, that they were hauled over to America on boats, like animals chained up.  And that they were treated like animals, that they were slaves, and that they grew the food that his ancestors, that white ancestors officer, his ancestors ate.  That they built the homes that they lived in, that they built the country...because he does not want to acknowledge that.  He does not want to acknowledge that, so he can not acknowledge the suffering and the words that this black man is saying to him.  

That's the consciousness that needs to change. We have to accept where we came from in order to change the present and to change the now, we have to acknowledge the sins of our past. We have to acknowledge the tragedies of who and what we are, what this country was built upon - the tears of sorrow, of black men and women slaves, the tears and sorrow of indigenous Native Americans whose land was stolen, whose brothers and fathers and sisters were killed, and children were killed, in massacres.  We have to acknowledge where we are today and have context.  We have to acknowledge the historical context of the past to place the fulcrum and to the place meaning on the present moment.  That man kneeling on Floyd's neck and suffocating him and killing him is because his consciousness never acknowledged the oppression of the black man to begin with. And so until that happens, there won't be change.  Until millions of white people acknowledge that. Because then they’ll have compassion, then they'll have compassion.  When a black man says, “I can't breathe” they'll listen. They'll hear it.

I don't have all the words guys.  It's a tragedy what's going on in this country.  I can tell you that our Commander in Chief, our leader, has zero wisdom for the men and women in this country, he has zero leadership ability to condemn the wrong actions.  He has zero ability to lift the spiritual consciousness.  He does the opposite.  He divides.  And I don't even want to give him the time of day and the attention to talk about him for too long.

But I encourage you all out there to think about what it is in your life that you can change personally.  Think about what it is that you may do or how you may perpetuate the concepts of white privilege, the consciousness of white privilege.  Look, it's not, you know, I'm not saying you're a racist.  I don't think anyone's saying white people are all racist.  That's not the case.  But I do think that a majority of white people haven't tapped into a place of compassion for their minority brothers and sisters, for the blacks and the brown men and women of this country. The indigenous.  We've taken from them for centuries.  And so until we practice understanding and having compassion - then there is a subconscious guidance to our actions, to our thinking and how we approach things.  When we drive down the street and we see a black man with a hoodie on, we don't think, “Oh, there's a criminal. He's up to no good.”  No, we think, “Oh, there's a young man who probably doesn't have a job because he's been oppressed for 500 years.  Who has had no fighting chance and doesn't have the same access to education that I have.  How can I help that man?”  Consciousness shift in viewing that.  

And that's what needs to happen with middle class white Americans, with upper-class white Americans, with white Americans.  The people who’re in the middle - the American people who are not racist, who’re just stagnant, complacent...people who don't consider themselves racist - they're the ones who need to get off the couch.  Get active in their thinking.  The white suburban Americans.

It takes humility to recognize that you have privileges more than somebody else.  It takes maturity to recognize that you have access to more things than somebody else might.  Why does it take humility?  Why does it take maturity?  Because once you have that realization, once you understand it, you then have to do something about it.  You then have to do something with your new-found knowledge.  That's why people don't want to accept white privilege, because they don't want to do anything. They want to go on living their little comfortable lives. They don't want to be affected.  They don't want their little realities to be disturbed with the truth. 

They don't want their facades of their lifestyles and their images to be disrupted.  When you acknowledge privilege, you then have to acknowledge that you have to change the way you do things and think.  People don't want to change.  People are lazy.  People are ignorant.  People are complacent and apathetic.

It's easy to be ignorant.  In fact, people love to be ignorant.  Because if you don't know about the house that’s burning next door to you, you don't have to go out and try and put out the fire.  You can sit on your couch, eat Cheetos, and watch your NASCAR, while it burns.  But if you know it's burning and you look out that window and you see the flames and you still eat those Cheetos and watch NASCAR on your couch, you then have to wrestle with what we all have - a conscience.  You then have to wrestle with a conscience telling you to go do the right thing,

to do something about it.  But if you never, if you keep the blind shut, and you never see the flames, you won't have to wrestle with that consciousness because you can just be blissful in your ignorance and your complacency.   And you can keep chowing, and keep watching, and just keep living the American way.  And that, my friends, right there is the problem with millions of Americans.  They love it.  They love to keep their consciousness small and their awareness small so they don't have to take action.  

If I'm not conscious about something that's happening around me, I don't have to do anything about it. So if you don't accept that you're privileged as a white man or woman - if you don't accept it - you don't have to change it. So, if you want to stay in the dark then stay in the dark...and that's what they do - they stay in the dark instead of accepting how they can do better, live better, be better. It's time to change, guys. It's not working. Take personal responsibility. Get off your couch. Go out there and put out the fire that's burning right next door to you.

Get active in changing and understanding and educating your children about what this country is and how it came about and what it was founded on - the backs of slaves, stolen lands, oppression, control.  When you change your mind, you change your consciousness, you view things differently, change your perceptions. That's what we have to do.  That's the responsibility.  

It's a tough subject, guys. I'm kind of stumped to be honest.  All I can say is go forth and do good.  Be good.  Tap into higher values.  I'm not here to say it's wrong to burn down the building, or to march in the street, or to not burn down the building.  I'm here to say, what can you do to change the problem?  Find the answer and do it.  Take accountability.  Take responsibility.  I'm Amadon DellErba.  This is Get Real or Die Trying, Episode 10 - talking about White Privilege.

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