ON SAYING YES – TO CRIMINALS

I never in my youth saw myself as a racist. At school, I heard about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. So I wanted to go help those black people over there and so on. But then I came to the US, and there you quickly learn to be racist.

For what happens when we Europeans go to the US?

Typically, we move in with some white European friends or other white friends over there, right?
Then we're immediately bombarded with “don’t walk two blocks this way or tree blocks that way” and immediately frightened with fear and terror of those they think of.
They rarely mention the word "black", but it's obvious that it's black people they talk about.

And I was young and naive, and they instilled the same terrible fear in me.

And they seem so loving with all the best intentions and just want to protect us.
But in any case, that's what I learned. That the evil people in America were the blacks.
That's what I was told from day one, and now I am going give you even more fear by showing you a whole bunch of pictures of those evil people, - or the children of wrath or anger or pain, as I call them.

For what happens when we are suddenly subjected to that kind of brainwashing?

Especially when it comes in the name of love, and not out of hate.
Yes, it's then we lose faith in others and start to generalize about them. The fear they instill in us we end up projecting out onto ALL black people, no matter who they are.
As Obama says in his books, if he walks around in jeans in the white suburbs, then he's paralyzed by white racism, by their fear.
Or if he tries at night to get a taxi in the big cities, then he can wait for hours as a black man.

And that creates even more anger in the people we ghettoize in such an aversive way.
So that was the racism I fell head over heels into.
And we're not even aware of it ourselves, aware of how it affects our own behavior.

But our inner thinking towards black people, they can immediately feel. For we are not aware of how our own body language betrays us.
Therefore, when I in my naivity walked around town, and met all those street people, they could definitely sense that I was sending them a message in one way or another.
Through my anxious, fearful eyes and evasive behavior I was sending them the terrifying message,
“You're bad. You're a bad guy. I have reason to fear you.”
And that's a crushing message to send to children and youngsters who are already suffering.

And who have always seen reactions like that from fleeing white Americans and been told that they are worse than evil monsters.

And if at the same time, they perhaps have a father at home who couldn't get a job because of white racism and therefore gave up and turned to drinking, then he also often becomes so violent in his rage, that his son was beaten up throughout his childhood.

So, then we're faced with such children of pain who are boiling with uncontrollable emotions, - yes, when I then through my signals said to them, “You're bad. You're a bad guy, I have reason to fear you so much,” – well, then it re-stimulates all the bad feelings they have about themselves, and then they explode in violence and attack me.

How do I know that?
Simply because it happened again and again during the first two years I was in America. Four times I was attacked by men with guns, numerous times by gangs with knives, not to mention all the verbal assaults, “Get out of here, you white motherfucker.”

Well, that is the same language we already hear from some of our second- and third-generation immigrants in Denmark, who feel exactly the same way because they don't feel loved in our society, right?

And when you're constantly beaten down and mugged by the people whom I actually came over there to help in one way or another, what happens to ourselves?
Then we become even more racist.

And that's the experience that most well-meaning Europeans have when they come to the US.
That is how we end up on the racist side of the fence, whether we want it or not - with our white privilege and insensitivity.
Often we become even more conservative than the Americans.

I have long ago understood that I wouldn't have made American Pictures and stood here today if I had stayed as such a primitive or clumsy racist.

So I must have received a helping hand, and that I got in so many mysterious ways from saving angels, which I in my new book try to analyze.
What actually happened? Who helped me? Who got me out of that destructive brainwashing?

Let me just quickly mention here one typical way it happened for me.
In my attempt to get away from all those angry gangsters in the big cities, I hitchhiked around a lot in the first few years to the big white university towns.
They are very protected places, right? For that is where the rich people's kids go.
So, there are lots of police, too.

And I was young, so I loved hanging out with all those young wonderful students.
But that way I sometimes ended up staying also with black students.
And now we have to remember who the few black people are who are even able to get into these fancy universities, - those that are now under attack by Trump and his poor MAGA followers?
Those black students told me their stories in different ways.
Yes, they are the ones who have also been exposed to all that pain and anger in childhood.
They saw their brothers get involved in violence and gangs and crime, that anger we always create around us when we exclude people.
But then they often talked about some loving high school teachers who took care of them or gave them a feeling of love, or some strangers or grandmothers, who helped them work through the anger they had already accumulated.
And that's how they through such saving angels managed to get into that good university.
And it's important to understand that anger, for people can't learn anything if they are in anger, if they've just been beaten up at home, etc.  
You can't sit down the next day and write an essay or read a new book or anything. No, it all those chaotic emotions still run through your head.

And that's why the blacks in the USA and the brown in Denmark tend to fall behind in school in PISA scores. Not only because of the anger they have inside them, but because they don't get any help – from us more fortunate people.
But now when I'm moved in with those more lucky black students who as a result were well behaved in such fancy university…..
Well, then I couldn't any longer see them as some kind of "monsters" I should fear.
No, by living with them I slowly learned to see them as good people I could trust.

Even when they had visits by their brothers from their home ghettos who had become gangsters, through their eyes I also began to see them as good people.
Gradually I began to let go of my fear of black people in general, although it wasn't something I was aware of.
But after a couple of years, I had kind of built up a whole bank capital of trust toward black people.
So when I now went around on the big city streets, and met all those angry elements, but my inner body language had changed.
Now I was sending them complete opposite signals in my inner thinking, basically saying that “You're good. You're okay. I trust you, you're totally fine”.

And if there is anything they crave, the children of pain, it is Love.
It is meeting people who trust them, who don't judge or fear them.
For them it is the same as love.
I'm not saying I'm a very loving person.
No, but they SEE this as love, suddenly to get that reaction of being accepted as whole human beings. Not to see whites flee in all directions at the sight of them.
From that moment I learned that even the worst criminals and murderers melted at my feet, so to speak, and took me by the hand to show me around in their world of pain.

And from then I was myself safe.
For since then, I have never been attacked again. Not even once although I saw and photographed my friends killing each other.
And here you have to remember that the crime rate has since increased tenfold from back in those days, when I was constantly being attacked by blacks.
So here you can see the value in learning to trust people instead of being afraid of them.
Suddenly, I could travel freely among both black and white people.
Unlike Americans themselves who are always looking over their backs in fear.
By not any more demonizing others, I became a free person, you could say.
For racists lose their freedom.
We saw that very dramatically in Denmark after we had convinced ourselves that Muslims were the scum of the Earth, and then we even had to rub salt in the wound by drawing pictures of Muhammad and printing them, resulting in violence exploding all over the world.
Suddenly we Danes felt we couldn't travel to all the countries where we had always been so popular.
Yes, racists lose their freedom.
I now won my freedom.

What I am talking about here is just what we today call non-violent communication, a thinking from Marshall Rosenberg's books.
Or loving thinking, or something you can learn in giraffe language.
The giraffe with the big overview and the big beating heart, right?

Well, that's the kind we just slaughter in zoos in Denmark and feed to the wolves.
In Denmark, we speak the language of wolves :-)
Well, I just hope you can see the value in it and learn to trust your fellow human beings.
For in an increasingly violent world, the only way you can survive is by having complete and unconditional trust in the goodness in people and thereby helping that goodness to flourish and thrive all the time.
But if we have become so oppressed ourselves that we go around demonizing and fearing people, telling our children to stay away from this or that group because they're bad and evil or dangerous, - if we  thus constantly plant negative feelings in those other people, whom it affects, well, then you or your children will end up yourselves being beaten down such as it once happened to me when I had been taught to fear.

So, here you clearly see that it is in our own self-interest to unlearn our racism if we want to survive in an increasingly violent world.
And once you've learned it, you see how the world opens up with loving hands everywhere and literally carry you around with love.
A love you can never get enough of, so that's why when I travel around even in the most violent neighborhoods in Africa, I always ask police where the highest crime rates are.
And then I go in and play with the children in those ghettos to see if it also works here.
And does it?
Yes, you can see that I'm standing alive here today.
But why does it work?

Because all people want to be loved!

Wow, yes, we all knew that, so why do we always end up doing the opposite and making other people feel unloved, rejected, feared, and terrible people, ....just like Trump always makes them feel?

So, it's the security and love you receive and give back all over the world which opens it up for you and makes life worth living.
My son learned that in childhood when he lived with so many blacks and strangers in my house, and ever since then he has traveled safely in every country in the world.
And yes, for free without spending money, because people love him and invite him to stay everywhere.

Anyway, that's what I've been teaching my American students in those unlearning racism workshop my whole life.
Try to trust and love instead of fearing black people and see all the love you get back.
But it's not easy for them.
Typically they relate in tears in those workshops, when talking about how when they were 2 or 3 years old, they drove through the city with their parents, when they ended up too close to some of the black neighborhoods and suddenly they heard the door locks clicking. Click, click, click.
It was the first time their parents had scared them like that, and they were told to stay away from black people.
And when such a negative message is planted in children before they can intellectually understand what it's about, it sticks with them for life and creates a lifelong fear of black people.

And then when I years later have them as students in universities, they've also developed a sense of guilt, Christian guilt, about their racism.
So, they desperately now want to have a black friend, one of the few black people on campus, to convince themselves that they're not racists.

But that is a scary experience for them to try to reach out to one of the few blacks.
Because what happens when they lovingly reach out to the black people?
Then of course they feel all their parents' early warnings lovingly pull them the other way.
And it's a scary experience for people to feel that they betray their parents' love, right?

So, when they reach out in one direction towards the blacks, they get pulled back the other way by the parents.
So they end up being completely clumsy and therefore say the wrong things to the blacks and immediately press their anger button.
And that button is already at the bottom for most blacks who have gone through their own oppression as children.
And then come all the explosions of racism charges that I get invited back to try to heal in the universities.
I feel for the white students, for I can see that they are not free people but themselves oppressed. For free people would be able to behave freely to each other.

So, if they manage to get a black friend, they're typically from the Caribbean or Africa, not those scary black Americans, whom their parents always warned them about.

But when I follow them over the years and see them start forming families, then I see another story. Without even thinking about it, they now move away to neighborhoods where there are too many black people.
Or they take their children out of school if there are too many black students and put them in private schools.
And in that way they repeat all their parent’s distress patterns.
Under such patterns the good white Americans - people like us here – not evil ones like the Ku Klux Klan – end up forcing millions of blacks into ghettos.
Yes, the best of white Americans. For this is how we push millions of black people into ghettos against their will. The blacks want to be integrated, but they are not allowed to by people like us.
In the name of love, to protect our own children, we commit the greatest crime against humanity. Namely, to get whole groups of people to feel unloved and rejected and condemned and to live on the outside of society’s mainstream.
With all the anger and self-hate that always comes from not feeling loved.
In the name of love – not hatred – we today conduct the greatest crimes against humanity – in our own filter bubbles and echo chambers - such as we also see it here in Europe these days, with our own minorities.
That is why I appeal to you to begin integrating with the people we have in our own societies, not least the Muslims around us to avoid that they end up in similar parallel societies as the enormous black ghettos in America.

_______________________________

DeepL corrected version

When I was young, I never saw myself as a racist. At school, I learnt about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. I wanted to help black people in the US, and so on. But then I came to the US and quickly learned to be racist.

What happens when Europeans go to the US? We immediately become racist.

Typically, we move in with white friends, like Danish friends, for example. Then we're immediately told not to walk two blocks this way and are filled with fear and terror about the people they mention. They rarely mention black people by name, but it's obvious that they're talking about black people.

I was young and naive, and they instilled the same terrible fear in me.

They seemed loving and well-intentioned, and just wanted to protect us from those evil black people. But that's what I learned in any case. That the evil people in America were black. They said that from day one, and now I'm going to show you lots of pictures of those evil people — the children of wrath, anger and pain.

What happens when we are suddenly subjected to that kind of brainwashing?

Especially when it comes in the name of love and not hate. It's then that we lose faith in others and start to generalise about them. We project our fear onto all black people, no matter who they are. As Obama says in his books, imagine if he walked around in jeans in the white suburbs.

Then he's paralysed by white racism and their fear. Or, if he tries to get a taxi at night in big cities, he can wait for hours as a black man.

This creates even more anger in the people we reject and ghettoise in this way. That was the racism I fell head over heels into. We're not even aware of it ourselves or how it affects our behaviour.
[⚠️ Suspicious Content] Black people can immediately sense our inner thoughts towards them. We don't understand our own body language. So, when I walked around town and met all those people on the street, they could definitely sense that I was sending them a message in one way or another. Through my anxious and fearful eyes, and my evasive behaviour, I was sending them the message: 'You're bad. You're a threat. I have reason to fear you.'

It's a terrible message to send to children who are already suffering.

They have always seen reactions like that from fleeing white Americans and been told that they are worse than bad.

If, at the same time, they have a father at home who couldn't get a job because of racism against black people, and therefore gave up and turned to drinking, then not only is he drunk, but he also often becomes so violent in his rage that he beats up his son throughout his childhood.

So, we're faced with children who are full of pain and boiling with emotion. When I then tell them, "You're bad. You're a bad guy; you're the reason I fear you so much,' well, that just stimulates all the negative feelings they have about themselves and they explode in violence and attack me.

And how do I know that? Because it happened again and again during the first two years I was there. I was attacked four times by men with guns and numerous times by gangs with knives, not to mention all the verbal abuse: 'Get out of here, you white motherfucker'.

This is the same language that we hear from some of our second- and third-generation immigrants in Denmark. They feel the same way because they don't feel loved in our society.

When you're constantly beaten and mugged by the people you came to help, what happens?

We become even more racist.


 

That's the experience most well-meaning Europeans have when they come to the US. It's how we end up on the racist side of the fence, whether we want to be or not, because of our white privilege and insensitivity.

I realised a long time ago that I wouldn't have made it in America and ended up here today if I had remained that kind of primitive, clumsy racist.

I must have received help, and I received it in many mysterious ways. I try to analyse these in my new book. What actually happened? Who helped me? Who rescued me from that brainwashing?

I will quickly mention one typical way it happened for me here. In an attempt to escape the angry gangsters in the big cities, I hitchhiked around the big white university towns a lot in the first few years. They're very safe places, aren't they? That's where the children of the wealthy go, after all. There are also lots of police.

I was young at the time, so I loved hanging out with all the young students.

But sometimes I ended up staying with the black students. Can you remember who the few black people were who were even able to get into the fancy universities? They told me about it in different ways. Yes, they are the ones who were exposed to pain and anger as children; they saw their brothers get involved in violence, gangs, crime, and so on. It's the anger that we create when we exclude people. But then they often talk about some loving high school teachers who cared for them and made them feel loved, or some strangers who helped them work through the anger they had accumulated.

It's important to understand that anger, and that's how they got into that good university. People can't learn anything if they're angry or have just been beaten up at home, can they?  They can't sit down the next day and write an essay, read a new book, or do anything else. No, it all runs through your head.

[⚠️ Suspicious Content] So that's why black people in the USA and brown people in Denmark tend to fall so far behind at school. It's not because they're angry, but because they didn't get any help from us.

Now that I've moved in with those more privileged black students, who behave so nicely at this fancy university, I can see things differently. I could no longer see them as monsters to be feared. In fact, by living with them, I slowly learned to trust them.

Even when their siblings from the ghettos visited, and they were gangsters, I began to see them as people too. I gradually began to let go of my fear of black people in general, though I wasn't aware of it at the time. After a couple of years, however, I had built up a lot of trust towards black people. So when I went out on the streets and met all those angry people, my inner body language had completely changed. I was now sending them a completely different signal: "You're okay. You're okay. I trust you; you're totally fine”.

If there's anything the children of pain crave, it's seeing people who trust them and don't judge or fear them. Love is what they need. I'm not saying that I'm a loving person. But they see this as love when they suddenly get the reaction of being accepted as whole human beings. They don't want to see people run away in fear at the sight of them.

From that moment, I learned that even the worst criminals and murderers would melt and take my hand to show me around their world of pain.

From then on, I was safe. I have never been attacked again since then. Not once. You have to remember that the crime rate has increased tenfold since then, when I was constantly attacked by black people. So you can see the value in trusting people instead of being afraid of them.

Suddenly, I could travel freely among black and white people alike. This was in contrast to the Americans themselves, who were always looking around, being very cautious and living in fear. By not demonizing others, I became a free person.

Racists lose their freedom. We saw this very dramatically in Denmark after we convinced ourselves that Muslims were scum in the 2000s. Then, we rubbed salt into the wound by drawing and printing pictures of Muhammad, and suddenly violence exploded all over the world. We Danes suddenly felt that we couldn't travel to all the countries where we had always been so popular.

Racists lose their freedom. I have now won my freedom.

What I am talking about here is what Martin Rosenberg calls non-violent communication in his books, or what you might call loving thinking, or something you can learn in giraffe language. You know, the giraffe with the big overview and the big beating heart.

Well, that's the kind of thing we slaughter in Danish zoos and feed to the wolves. In Denmark, we speak the language of wolves.

I just hope you can see its value and learn to trust your fellow human beings. In an increasingly violent world, the only way to survive is to have complete and unconditional trust in people's goodness, and help it to flourish. But if we have become oppressed ourselves, demonizing and fearing people and telling our children to stay away from certain groups because they're supposedly bad, evil or dangerous, we will constantly plant negative feelings in those people and it will affect them. You or your children may end up being beaten down, as I once was when I was taught to fear.

So, if we want to survive in an increasingly violent world, we must recognize that it is in our own self-interest to unlearn our racism. Once you have unlearned it, you will see how the world opens up to you everywhere you go. That's why, when I travel around even the most violent neighborhoods in Africa, I always ask the police where the highest crime rates are. Then I go and play with the children in those areas to see if it works. And does it work?

Yes, I'm standing here alive today, but why does it work?

Because everyone wants to be loved.

Yes, we all knew that, but why do we always end up making them feel unloved, rejected and terrible people, just like Trump?

It's the security and love you get all over the world that opens things up for you.

My son learned that in childhood when he lived with lots of black people and strangers. Ever since then, he has travelled safely in every country in the world. He travels for free, without spending money, because people love him and invite him to stay with them.

That's what I've been teaching my American students in my 'unlearning racism' workshops all my life. Try trusting and loving black people instead of fearing them, and see all the love you get back. But it's not easy for them. In those workshops, they typically relate how, when they were two or three years old, they drove through the city with their parents and ended up close to some black neighborhoods. Suddenly, they heard the door locks click. Click, click, click. It was the first time their parents had scared them like that and they were told to stay away from black people.

When a message like that, so negative, is instilled in children before they can understand it, it stays with them for life, creating a lifelong fear of black people.

Years later, when I have them as students at university, they have also developed a sense of Christian guilt about their racism. They now desperately want a black friend — one of the few black people on campus — to convince themselves that they're not racist.

However, reaching out to one of the black people is a scary experience for them. What if they lovingly reach out to black people? Of course, they then feel their parents' early warnings lovingly pulling them in the opposite direction. It's a scary experience to feel that you're betraying your parents' love, isn't it?

So, when they reach out to black people, they feel pulled in the opposite direction, which makes them completely clumsy. They end up saying the wrong things to black people, immediately pressing their anger button, which is already at the bottom for most black people at universities in the US. Then come all the explosions of racism that I am invited to try to resolve. I feel for them because I can see that they are not free, but oppressed – both white and black students. Free people would be able to behave freely towards each other.

If they manage to make a black friend, they're usually from the Caribbean or Africa – not the scary black Americans their parents warned them about.

But when I follow them over the years and see them starting families, I see a different story emerge. Without thinking, they move to neighborhoods with few black people or take their children out of state schools and put them in private ones. In doing so, they repeat their parents' patterns of distress. It is good white Americans like us here, not evil ones like the Ku Klux Klan, who force millions of black people into ghettos. Yes, even the best of white Americans. This pushes millions of black people into ghettos against their will. Black people want to be integrated, but people like us do not allow them to be. In the name of love and to protect our own children, we are committing the greatest crime against humanity. We condemn whole groups of people to feeling unloved, rejected and condemned to living on the fringes of society. This leads to anger and self-hatred, which come from not feeling loved.

In the name of love, not hatred, we conduct the greatest crimes against humanity in our own filter bubbles and echo chambers, as we also see with our own minorities in Europe these days. That is why I appeal to you to integrate with the people in our societies, including Muslims, to avoid them ending up in similar parallel societies to those experienced by black people in America.