When I was young (teenager, and into my 20s), I used to think “being good”, what I would now term being BPM, was enough to change the world.
I was wrong.
There is no question that projecting BPM energy and being BPM is vitally important, but to think one doesn’t also have to clear nonBPM units and do personal and global (which means being a human rights & dignity/DEI activist - even getting involved in politics) shadow work is dangerously naïve and actively undermines the BPM.
I am writing this now because I came across an outstanding brief post on LinkedIn which outlines the dangers of what is termed “colour blindness”, a brief post with an excellent graphic by Danielle Coke (see this excellent interview with her on YouTube).
I can’t find a copy of the illustration of Danielle Coke’s Instagram page (and she has reported her work being used without proper credit, incidentally), but then I refuse to sign in to anything owned by Meta - others may find the illustration (and a stack of other excellent illustrations) there, and, for those with LinkedIn accounts (apologies), there is the original post I linked to.
In any case, there are a stack of useful links that I have been able to find on the dangers of race colour blindness, and those principles apply to the misconception that one doesn’t have to deal with the nonBPM.
See:
- when it comes to race and justice, ‘colour-blindness’ is not good enough (The Conversation, 2018);
- Implicit racism, colour blindness, and narrow definitions of discrimination: Why some White people prefer ‘All Lives Matter’ to ‘Black Lives Matter’, West et al, 2021, British Journal of Social Psychology, https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12458;
- being “color blind” doesn't make you not racist — in fact, it can mean the opposite (Oprah Daily);
- color-blindness perpetuates structural racism (Forbes);
- https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/aug/11/its-dangerous-not-to-see-race-is-colour-blind-casting-all-its-cracked-up-to-be (The Guardian); and
- Racial Color Blindness: Emergence, Practice, and Implications, Apfelbaum et al, , Current Directions in Psychological Science, Association for Psychological Science, https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Racial%20Color%20Blindness_16f0f9c6-9a67-4125-ae30-5eb1ae1eff59.pdf.
In terms of the energy work I advocate for on this blog, the problems of the BPM only approach include:
- they do not address the material world injustices, abuses and lies that are used by the nonBPM to control people, and to hide behind;
- people refusing to acknowledge nonBPM issues/aspects/units in/affecting themselves., or their past history, are leaving themselves blind and vulnerable to coming under nonBPM influence;
- not being able to detect changes in the ways the nonBPM work and adapt accordingly; and
- massive wastes of time, energy and effort by missing the targets or being ineffective.
PS - I am also more convinced than ever similar caution applies to those who seek protection of discriminated against groups by laws only, and not not by laws PLUS education and other activism aimed at changing the hearts and minds of bigots.
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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.
