The answer to Hate, Fear and Violence is to #ThinkDontSqueeze

The tragedies in Charlottesville claimed the lives of 3 innocent victims in a conflict of fear and confusion. Three families and a nation mourn the lives of two State Troopers who bravely served all people in the line of duty and an innocent civilian exercising her right to a peaceful assembly. As a result of this tragedy I’ve received a lot of emails and messages from people all over the world inquiring about the state of society in the United States. Many of them are wondering “What’s going on in the United States of America? Why are you fighting each other?” To get to the root of this we need to first explain a few terms.

A “nationalist” wants their nation to win above all other nations, and they get triggered when someone born foreign to the USA prospers. The prosperity of a foreign born person in the USA makes a white nationalist feel inferior to another nation.

A white nationalists wants whites to win above all other ethnicities, and white nationalists in the USA specifically want whites native born in the US to succeed over whites born foreign to the US. These white nationalists get triggered when Mexican-American, African-Americans, Asians and South Asian/Indian-Americans prosper because it makes them feel inferior to a non-white person. The fear of white nationalists has escalated in recent years as the predictions of population change for the USA show a more diverse nation. A more diverse future is a more competitive future for a white nationalist.

The threat of white and national inferiority stems from the mindset US society has taken on with regard to competition in general. We ridicule and look down on people for their social class, looks, level of education, abilities or anything that can be deemed as a challenge. We are taught this American caste system at home, in school, and it is reinforced in all walks of life once we enter the job market. Further more there is an implicit bias of privilege planted and reinforced by the media which features an over-representation of white prosperity. Commercials, ads, films and tv show images glorify the American dream featuring white majority faces when in fact the National Center for Child Research shows that among America’s poor children, 4.2 million are white, 4 million are Latino, 3.6 million are African American, 400,000 are Asian, and 200,000 are American Indian. This grim statistic of white poverty is rarely represented in mainstream media.
The underrepresentation of people of color in the media also contributes to the problem. The media under-represents people of color in mainstream media and over-represents them in ill-fated poverty, and crime laden stories, leading to a rampant harmful implicit bias in our society (the opposite of privilege). Researchers found that participants in a simulated study would shoot armed targets more often and more quickly if they’re black rather than white, and refrain from shooting more often when the target is white. The most common mistakes were shooting an unarmed black target and failing to shoot an armed white target (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002). These implicit biases cause us to believe things that are not logically true or consistent with our values when it comes to ethnicity in the USA, especially as they relates to African American males.
Many white nationalists are or have been poor and powerless, and are terrified of being poor and powerless. Many whites who feel the alt-right movement speaks for them have never met or spent significant time with any other ethnicities or foreign born US citizens. They have never sat down in the home of someone different from them to share a meal of foreign spice, and never had a humanizing experience with a person who wasn’t a white U.S. citizen. When a white nationalists finally engage with the real and very diverse world that the US has become they are faced with the truth of equality. No measure of white privilege will prevent other ethnicities from being equal to you in a global society. This fear of white failure in a global world simply hasn’t had a voice in society, it’s been drowned out by the discussions of white privilege, white privilege that doesn’t scale for the future of the world or the USA. And for all that fear that hasn’t had a voice in the mainstream, white nationalism has risen to be that voice.
The reality of equality along with the misrepresentation of ethnicity, privilege and poverty in the media adds up to white nationalists struggling with mismatched expectation for the world. This unmatched expectation creates a huge obstacle whenever a white nationalist doesn’t “win” if their competition is another ethnicity or nationality. They feel like they have failed in the worst way. They feel like they are a worthless nothing. They feel like they are no longer great. The combination of a low value of other ethnicities and nationalities through implicit bias driven by poor media representation begins to reflect as low value of self when the actual state of human equality reveals itself in society. Disrespect toward others becomes heightened by a sense of ones own self-loathing and fear of failure to thrive. White nationalism is nothing more than a self-esteem crisis playing out on the big screen.
This cycle, however deeply rooted it may appear, can be disrupted. Healthier lifestyles (which include exposure to diverse cultures) contributes to exposure, education and healthier learned behavior that is empowered by living in a global society rather than an isolated one. Additionally when someone has faced serious trauma in childhood, or adulthood it may increase the likelihood to isolate ourselves, hate ourselves and fear others. Trauma itself needs to be better treated in the US. Nationalist ideologies have taken root in people who have suffered some or several types of deep trauma that have never been addressed. Healthy esteem for self and others is important, and it begins with good overall health of our community and ecosystem.

It may feel counter-intuitive but calling white nationalists sick and disgusting people doesn’t actually help stop the illness and pain within them. It doesn’t heal the implicit bias that has set our society up to expect white privilege and foreign poverty. Attacks on their person deepens the shame they feel, and strengthens the impulse of uncontrolled behavior (anger and fear) which deepens their reliance on validation from their hateful peer group. Resorting to insults and attacks is not a thoughtful enough response to repair the damage our society has suffered. Frederick Douglas the great abolitionist is quoted to have said “the moral growth of a nation requires reflection.” The great Dr Martin Luther King provided one of those great reflections: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”. When we begin to treat the trauma of poverty and reduce our social emphasis on competition we can increase our emphasis on love, safety and inclusion. Then and only then can our culture shift. The answer to Hate, Fear and Violence is to #ThinkDontSqueeze.
