Personal Notes 

What does it matter what colour you are? - It's your behaviour that counts!

Just recently there have been a spate of "colour" incidents and tragically the common rallying cry of "racism" is trumpeted by those with a political agenda and those with a profit agenda (the politicians want to get votes and the media wants to sell papers etc.)

I think that this is very sad and it shows me that after 14 years of "freedom" some of us are still trapped by our prejudices and are blinded by the conviction of our version of the truth.

Why is it that as soon as there is an altercation between two people of different race groups that we call "racism" but the same altercation between people of the same group is merely a spat?

In my seminars I often carry out a demonstration of this by going to a person in the audience who has more pigmented skin than mine. (I by the way am "pigmentally challenged", in fact in relation to the climate I am actually "pigmentally disadvantaged". Now some people might call me white, but they should have their eyes checked because I am actually a sort of creamy brown colour. When I wear a white shirt there is a marked difference between my skin colour and the colour of the shirt. And I am quite sure that if you were to order white paper and get paper the colour of my skin you would be very annoyed and declare that the paper is not white. But my colour actually changes quite a lot. If I go out into the sun for too long I go an angry red, then for a short period I am more brown. If it is cold I go a sort of mottled blue and when embarrassed I flush red. So in fact I am actually different colours at different times.)

But I digress, back to the demonstration. So here I am a "pigmentally disadvantaged" person approaching a "pigmentally enriched" person and I shout at them. I then ask the audience what would they call that. Almost without fail the reply is that I am being "racist" I then approach someone in the audience is is also, like me, "pigmentally disadvantaged" and using the same words and tone shout at them. I then ask the audience what would they call that, and invariably the answer is bad manners or disrespect but certainly not "racism". The trouble is that when we focus on the participants rather that the behaviour we are inclined to make illogical emotional decisions.

Beware of labelling an incident because then you will get hooked on the label and find evidence to support your interpretation. Labelling a situation is an emotional response and the problem is that when emotion enters the picture logic and reason leave.

Always judge the behaviour and/or the performance of the people involved in an incident. Imagine that you did not know who was involved. You only know what they did. Now form your opinion of their behaviour on the basis of its acceptability and only when you have judged the behaviour.

We have got to get beyond this hiding behind colour problem that pervades certain sectors of our society. If you truly want to treat people as equal then make your judgement on behaviour not colour.

To live your best life be true to the YOU, that you want to be.

Live up to the reputation that you want to have.