I started out puzzling over racism this morning and wondering why it’s a thing, other than the societal programming that’s been around for ages.

My granddad was racist, blatantly so. I had heard the ‘N’ word many times in his home. It angered me while breaking my heart for the obvious hypocrisy. Go to church on Sundays; spew racist tripe the rest of the week. I didn’t understand then and I don’t now, but that was one of the reasons I left the church. Hypocrisy was embedded in its foundation.

I grew up in a small white town in Southern Oregon. My town was a sundown town, no law, but functioned as if it had one through intimidation and customs that lasted until the 70s. If you don’t know what a sundown law is, it means if you’re non-white, primarily black or Native American, you have to be out of the city limits before sunset.

Nice, eh? So very Christian.

All for the color of your skin?

To maintain a sense of superiority?

For what?

No. I think that one’s worth exploring. It colored the hearts and soul, the sight and actions of many generations, and even in 2026, still does.

We never left the 60s. It’s like the March on Washington, the attempts to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the sit-ins in Greensboro and Birmingham, the activists known as the Freedom Riders, and so many others, never risked their lives for their brothers and sisters.

Afterwards, we had freedom for all on paper, but in the hearts of racists everywhere, it didn’t exist. They simply went deeper into the basement and waited for the opportunity to ride the elevator back up into broad daylight.

It’s fascinating to me that the man who gave them permission to be as ugly as they wanted, as ugly as they were inside, who allowed them to be proud of their cruelty and bigotry, rode a gold elevator down to meet them.

But that misses the point that I was exploring this morning. Why does racism exist at all?

Fear.

Fear of other. Fear of differences. Fear of not being at the head of the line. Fear of not be superior. Fear of losing something. Fear of not getting. Fear of being ridiculed. Fear of being left out. Fear of being conned. Fear of being seen as dumb. Fear of looking like a fool. Fear of admitting you’re afraid. The list is endless.

Fear is everywhere, in every thought, belief and act that isn’t love.

I know. That sucks. It can’t be right, right?

That’s why those churches taught us (used to anyway) to love your neighbor as yourself. The BIG problem with that, is they didn’t tell people how to love themselves. How can you do that with the threat of hell hanging over your head? You must not be lovable if a loving God has to threaten you will hellfire. Now they merely twist the knife a bit and say, ‘It is love’; ‘it’s for your own good’ or ‘I have to be honest with you to save your soul.’ Bah.

I digress.

Fear is super easy to use if you’re in that business. Use it to manipulate. Use it to control. Use it to ensure blindness. Use it to ensure obedience. Use it to ensure that no one challenges your self-serving narrative. Use it to block out the truth.

Doesn’t matter if you’re the controlling boyfriend, the raging narcissistic husband or boss, or the manipulative president, it applies equally.

Fear is the open door that invites all sorts of trauma and pain into our lives. Fear of change, fear of dying (including all the little deaths listed above), fear of annihilation, fear of not existing, fear of the unknown … are what slows the awakening process, that which attracts self-protective, other-harming beliefs. Fear maintains the sense of separation when it doesn’t actually exist. It keeps us from seeing what is right in front of us and reinforces and concretizes the stories about others that have no basis in truth. Fear is at the core of every cruel act, self-cruelty and other, that has ever been carried out.

Racism will never disappear until we grow up, until we change, until the level of consciousness in which we operate rises enough to finally and irrevocably open our eyes, to let us see beyond the lies we currently hold as true.

Perhaps that is what these times are for, to shake us awake, to let us try everything in our power to fix our lives and fail, to make life so impossibly hard that we have no choice but to surrender.

Humans are tough nuts. We don’t bow down to our impotence, to our lack of power easily, no matter how much evidence we accumulate. It’s easier to see the bits of proof as anomalies than over-reaching reality. I know. I was incredibly hard headed. My deeply held lies had a vice-like grip on me. God-damn it, I could figure it out. Those lies seemed like they were me so I couldn’t even see them … until I could.

We don’t know what we don’t know until we do. If my words can act as nutcracker for just one human being, I’m good with that.

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Amaya is the author of 7 books, the latest Actuality: infinity at play. It is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and IngramSparks and others. Link to B&N https://bit.ly/4bXLFie