This is Gaslighting: Systemic Racism

Watch the Systemic Racism Explained video here.

I lived in the US for 4 years. Growing up in Argentina I had travelled to the U.S. as a tourist more times than I can count. With my parents, as a kid, and as an adult on my own. I turned 18 in the most beautiful little town called Tollhouse, in California, during my 3 month stay as an exchange student. I absolutely loved it! 

I'd always admired the U.S. capacity for getting, things, done. Walt Disney World! The airport and its modern infrastructures and spaciousness. The U.S. Postal Services and how quick and reliable it was compared to Argentinian postal services at the time. Perfect highways and streets, gorgeous neighborhoods, shops and malls where you could get anything you can possibly want or need. I saw the US as this giant that gave job opportunities to so many people from all over the world.

I now believe that after graduating from Georgia State University I must have had cognitive dissonance. 

 

On one hand I had obtained my Masters degree and was blown away by the University and how much I'd learned about Counseling and about the US as a society.

9/11 terrorist attack unveiled highly empathic U.S. citizens reaching out to people in need. I witnessed compassion and a deep sense of community and solidarity. 

On the other hand, for the first time in decades the "omnipotent" imperious giant was vulnerable and afraid. Fear is not the best companion, you know?. It can make very bad decisions. I also saw how racism and xenophobia graduated from covert to a politically correct status during that time. 

The US had a big elephant in the room and its existence was being denied. 

Years later black people are still discriminated, mistreated, invalidated and ignored because of their skin color. Back then my teenage self was outraged and frustrated with that idea at the time. My adult self could not stand it. It was unsettling, unbearably suffocating. I remember feeling off whenever I stayed for too long in Atlanta without going back to my imperfect Buenos Aires to recharge batteries during Christmas break. I felt that a big part of the population in this previously idealized giant had a huge tacit flaw: narrow mindedness, grandiosity, shallowness, prejudice, ignorance and lack of empathy. 

Now I know this is gaslighting. This is abuse.