As the Black Lives Matter protests exploded across this country, I saw a quote by a black man that essentially said, “BLM is not about being equal in a system that continues to pit us against each other. If all we want is the opportunity at the top of the heap, then all we’re doing it is perpetuating a system that isn’t good for any of us. The goal needs to be to create a better system for all of us.”
I smiled as I saw this and thought, “he’s got it right”. Because whether it is race or gender, age, or LBGQT, etc., every disenfranchised group has spent years fighting for its place at the top. Only now are we ready to understand — the fight isn’t about black vs. white, female vs. male, etc. It isn’t about what group is on top! The fight is about recognizing the fallacy that hierarchy is normal. It is not. It is a contrived system that started long before the first slave boat arrived in America. In the US, hierarchy shows up blatantly in racism. But in many other places hierarchy has nothing to do with skin color at all.
When Martin Luther King Jr., traveled to India it was a much anticipated trip because his belief in non-violence stemmed from the work of Mahatma Gandhi. One day, while visiting in the state of Kerala, MLK was introduced to a group of ‘Untouchables”. In the Indian form of hierarchy, it is a caste system that is over 3000 years old. “Untouchables” are the lowest of the low. They were relegated to jobs like cleaning out latrines and essentially rejected by Indian society. The man introducing him said, “I’d like to introduce you to America’s Untouchable, Martin Luther King”. MLK was shocked because he was a college graduate, a minister, was world traveled and well respected for his activist work. He did not see himself as lowly as an Untouchable who was the lowest caste in India.
This experience forced MLK to realize that America’s racism was but one of the many forms of hierarchy. America’s slavery was 400 years old but in respect to India’s 3000-year caste system of hierarchy, America’s slavery was a very young system. America didn’t start hierarchy. It just created the latest twist on a story that had begun more than 5000 years earlier.
We’ve been fighting racism since the end of the Civil War. The BLM movement is just the latest wave. It is time to realize, as the black man I mentioned above did, that it is the belief that hierarchy is normal that needs to be dismantled. We can never achieve justice as long as hierarchy is normalized. There is no justice in a system where some are allowed to be on top and others are expected to know their place below.
We have all been taught that hierarchy is normal. If you are born an Untouchable, a black man, a woman, gay or transgender, you have absorbed the lesson of hierarchy. If you were born a Brahmin or a white man in America, you’ve learned the hierarchy lesson too. Brahmins look down on the Untouchable and think it is normal, and the White southern man looked down on MLK and thought it was normal too. When MLK was told he was America’s “Untouchable”, it forced him to confront that he unconsciously thought there were others beneath him too.
Our work now, all of us together is to dismantle hierarchy. What can replace it? Wholeness — understanding that all humans are a part of an integrated whole. We are all equally valuable. That each has something to bring to life during our time on this planet. It is such a wonderful way to wake up every morning and see life through the lens of wholeness, inclusiveness and being able to welcome all with an open heart. It is so much better than what we do now — wake up in fear, scraping by to hold our place in the hierarchy while pushing others down and away.
Can we replace the normalcy of hierarchy with the normalcy of the whole? Yes — because for most of the human journey — this is how humans lived. We can trace the shift to hierarchy to about 10,000 years ago and we have the research that documents how it slowly spread across the world. Now every corner of the world displays hierarchy — but wholeness can resonate instead. But it won’t just happen — we must choose to shift to wholeness and spread it far and wide.
