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Breaking Down What Racial Discrimination Really Is

Byjack

I believe that racial discrimination exists primarily in today’s day and age in two forms:

  • Attractiveness. We know attractiveness is partly biological, but it is also in large part cultural. White people are considered more attractive than other races. We also know “pretty privilege” exists and has a profound effect on how trustworthy, successful and smart someone is. We are biologically and socially hardwired to like attractive people.
  • Social economics. We know that white people own most of the wealth. We also know wealth is generational and can give you a huge advantage in life.

Let’s just run through a few examples:

  • Who has a better chance of being an actor? What about a tik tok star? An attractive person or an unattractive person?
  • Who has a better chance of being a banker? Or a real estate agent? Someone who’s parents are investment bankers, or if their parents worked at Mcdonalds?

I believe that affirmative action and other tools to remove bias are not meant to “even the playing field” or create an “equality of outcome” (even distributions) but rather to counteract biases that may be counter to the correct action or truth. For example, hiring a more attractive person even though they are lazier, dumber and have less experience.

I do believe that race can be very complicated and there are many instances that are not being considered here. However, I feel that those cases are more niche and require more thinking as to the best solution, such as:

  • Perceptions of blacks as more capable of crime. 
  • Women not succeeding as much because of childbearing.

Broadly it is clear to me that this has two main implications:

  • Mainstream ideas about race discount the disadvantages of “ugly” low-income white people.
  • Mainstream race theory overcompensates for perceived roadblocks of “attractive” wealthy minorities (as they are not only privileged but are often touted as the beacons of hope when they are benefitting from the same system that is currently creating bias).

The only two things I would support affirmative action for would be affirmation action for looks (I don’t know how this would be measured exactly) and for social economic status. I believe that affirmation action in these two areas would:

  • Disproportionally benefit minorities as they are considered uglier and are often poorer
  • It would call attention to bias that we have very often in our own lives, a bias that affects our ability to make clear and rational decisions
  • We would see many competent and talented people who were formerly ignored, be brought to the top

Finally, I would say that all races and all people struggle with issues. There is little to no point in trying to make everyone happy. The main point is to somehow come up with a system where our biases have checks and balances that will guide us to making the most rational and clear decisions.

Being someone who has grown up a minority in America, there is a big wound racism creates within you, a feeling that there is something wrong with you. However, those wounds are opportunities to heal and become wiser, they are not something that everyone else needs to carefully tiptoe around (and be politically correct about). Wounds and pain are not bad things. We can show compassion without enabling people to not grow emotionally and not face their own demons.

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Profit in Peace 5: Next Steps

Byjack

Today I want it to be all about Instagram.

I want to do the following:

  1. Put in a good headshot
  2. Rework bio
  3. Create Instagram brand/colors
  4. Add in youtube videos, add brand
  5. Add friends and create offer

Also, I want to spend 20 minutes watching the next part of the coaching session.

Finally, I want to go after the brand and posts in a directed way. I’ll use the syllabus method.

A reminder for the syllabus method:

  1. Create a clear, ambitious, and exciting goal (something to inspire the angels)
  2. Use Alex Hormozi mindset (don’t think about how to achieve it, think about what would make it impossible for you to not achieve it)
  3. Break down those things into 3 steps
  4. If the steps are still too big and nebulous, break those steps into 3 more steps, repeating step 2 and 3

Goal: Create an Instagram page that is able to bring my energy of coaching to all artists, something so clear and powerful it is easy for me to create posts (3 hrs)

Step 1: Develop Brand (1 hr)

  • Tap into coaching energy, write down ideas
  • Try looka and other ai brand generators
  • Develop style guide

Step 2: Ask Questions and Get Answers

  • Put myself in the mindset of posting videos, posts, etc
  • Ask questions
  • Tap into coaching energy, answer questions
  • Research other similar brands

Step 3: Play Around With Brand

  • Create templates
  • Create sample videos and posts
  • Tap into coaching energy and adjust

Profit in Peace 23: Values Update

Byjack

I have an update in my values.

It’s been interesting see how my values used to feel really unclear back in this post and recently got much more clear in this post, but now I feel even more clear.

Knowing your values is so important because it helps you set boundaries. When you don’t know your values it is hard to know when someone is crossing a boundary and if they are, what boundary they are crossing.

Here is the new list:

  • Honesty (push people who don’t accept you away, pull people who do, closer)
  • Empathy/Emotion (everyone is going through struggles, be present for people’s emotions without taking responsibility)
  • Freedom (used to call this time and space)
  • Ambition/Possibility/Dreaming
  • Respect (value others, others value you)
  • Health
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New Coaching Instagram Page

Byjack

I had a really rough day today. I woke up at 4:30 AM in order to get to the airport and fly to Houston. Coming back I hit so much traffic, my uber took almost 2 hours and I was late for my flight by 2 minutes. Luckily, there was no one in line for security, I blazed through, ran to the gate and somehow they hadn’t departed yet.

While I was in the car for 2 hours seeing the time tick down and knowing that I was probably going to miss my flight, probably get on the next one, be stuck in the airport for another two hours, and get home at around 10 PM, I tried to make the best of my bad situation. I thought about my Instagram page for coaching, specifically posts and videos.

I had some ideas for the posts, having a dark gray background with a simple serif font. Also, I was thinking about doing some digital painting for my posts.

The videos were a little bit harder.

I stopped making the reminder videos because I felt so stuck and frustrated with them and I wanted to use connection theory to come up with some solutions.

I think there are a bunch of steps in the video-making process: shooting, editing, and final polish. Each has its own challenges and solutions that came to me.

Shooting

This is hard because I felt a lot of anxiety and overthinking about saying the right thing, and coming off as clear and interesting. Using connection theory, I felt that what I needed is to focus less on the words that I am saying and focus more on evoking feelings through my delivery (my voice and my expressions). They say when someone is talking, verbal queues (literally what they are saying) is only 10% of communication and non-verbals (your tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions) account for 90%. I want to really focus next time not on what I say, but how I say it. Also, I want to try spending something feeling into the reminder and shooting broll that evokes it in a non-verbal way. In general, I want to focus on non-verbals more.

Editing

This is hard because there is a lot of overwhelming decisions that I face at this stage. I am conflicted with staying true to what I originally shot vs any new visions on how to convey my thoughts. I feel often that I avoid emotions or lose touch of emotions just looking at the transcript without hearing the delivery and when I hear the delivery I am conflicted on what to cut out or change. I often feel the original work is no longer recognizable afterwards. I feeling into connection theory, I felt that fear dominated my ability to think, feel, and be creative and I’m thinking about using the law of contradictory intentions by “trying” to be unclear, trying to make no sense.

Final Polish

I didn’t think about this too much because it isn’t really a challenge except for maybe logistically (takes a long time). i was thinking about using the syllabus method, or batch a bunch of videos for the weekend to finalize and publish.

A quick silly example of what this might look like:

  1. Reminder: Today’s reminder is to eat chocolate
  2. Shooting: Focus on how to deliver the words. “Chocolate…mmmm. We want to crunch it!” Shoot broll of breaking chocolate. Of inhaling the chocolate smell.
  3. Editing: Try to make it a bad video.
  4. Editing: Try to find a song that doesn’t fit.
  5. Polish: Add it to a queue with instructions on what needs to be done to finish it off.

Giving Too Much

Byjack

I was in Taichi class the other day and my instructor said something very interesting.

She told us that if you are leaning forward, then you are “giving too much”. And if you lean back too much, you are “accepting too much” and when someone gives you a compliment, all you need to do is say a simple thank you.

It is an very interesting concept in taichi, this idea of always being in balance, always sitting on your heels even when pushing forwards.

I really want to experiment and see how much I can apply this to things like Valorant or productivity.

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Profit in Peace 11: Moving On???

Byjack

Ok, I decided something weird that I’m not sure is going to work yet.

I decided that I’m going to keep this challenge going on forever and we will have different objective driving it constantly. It will be a sort of daily journal where I get to focus on Profit in Peace, finding my ikigai, tapping into my coaching energy, feeling into my body, working on my challenges, and discovering that the world is a magical place.

It will continue to be labeled like the other challenges, but it is different in the sense that it doesn’t have a specific end date. The end date might be just when this mentality, thinking of this as a Profit in Peace no longer serves me. Which might be never.

You know in a way this should be called Blog Post. Because it is the most blog post of blog posts. The sole purpose of these posts is literally to work on my life through my blog. But “Blog Post” just doesn’t evoke what I need for it to evoke, so we ain’t doing it.

So what is the focus for today?

Today we have a similar bent to yesterday but a little more focused on gaming. In no particular order, I want to:

  • Play lots of valorant and create poems about how I feel about dropping to gold 1 and STILL losing
  • Cook lots of food, be creative and have fun eating
  • Watching another 20 minutes of the VOD review
  • Work on my knee challenge
  • Go for a run

Yesterday, I went for a short run.

Here is a poem about it:

Tingling in My Back

That’s the feeling when I push myself

My knees not ready for the impact

I want to massage my stomach and back

I’m aware of others watching

I wonder if Alice would be embarrassed of me

I want people to like me

Especially the girls

I think about how I learned to control what other’s thought of me

And that’s when everything went to a place

Shaky and scary

I remind myself

What others feel

Is out of my control

I’m proud of my innovative knee exercises

They make my prickly knees

Feel warm and supple again

I just came back from my most recent run. Today I focused on processing the anxiety being surrounded by everyone’s opinions of me. I realized a couple of things.

Dr Bea Mackay

She told me an exercise

The same one

Every session

Breath in breath out

I realized

It isn’t about other people

They never mattered

Neither did their opinions

I’m them

As a trigger for my pain

The sharp inhale

To take the pain

The release of the exhale

Filling me with warmth

From head to toe

The point was never to win their approval

It was to feel my pain

It is so interesting how Dr. Bea Mackay’s exercises are so similar to Wim Hoff’s. And Wim Hoff’s exercises are about enduring and thriving in pain too, just his are about cold and her’s are about emotions. No wonder so many people talk about the Wim Hoff method bringing them relief from chronic anxiety.