How do you deal with discrimination/hate?

Not very well. I have been a victim of reverse discrimination many times over. It was enough for me to understand how shitty real discrimination must feel.

@ARE_you_kidding_me reverse discrimination? What is that?

I ignore it.

I’m a white heterosexual male, so it may seem inappropriate for me to comment on this question. However…

@Eggie – It’s understandable that you may have anger and revenge fantasies when you feel that you have been wronged. But it might be worth asking yourself a few serious questions:

- When you are feeling angry and upset and engage in these fantasies, does your past abuser experience this sensation, or is it just you?
– If you were to act out on revenge fantasies, do you really believe that you would feel better? And if so, why? Would doing horrible things to this person erase the horrible things s/he did to you?
– When you wish that the bullying or victimization (or whatever it was) hadn’t happened, why do you wish that? Is it so that you wouldn’t have to be experiencing the anger you are now experiencing?

I’m not sure what has happened to you, so I apologize if I sound as if I’m trivializing it. But I think it’s worthwhile to note that your anger is hurting you. We sometimes feel that giving up on anger about a past injustice is somehow condoning what happened. But it might be that dropping the anger is merely taking control of your life right now and choosing to not be a victim any longer. If the injustice happened in the past, your replaying of it (in your mind) is causing it to happen over and over again.

It seems to me that there are many paths to dropping the anger. You mentioned “god” – so even in the context of your beliefs, I have heard of Christians who practice radical forgiveness. This might be something to investigate.

In retrospect, how do you drop the anger. It is easier said than done.

@Eggie: “In retrospect, how do you drop the anger. It is easier said than done.”

I can’t speak to the Christian approach, but one story comes to mind. But I did experience a ton of anger for much of my life. It wasn’t until I really started paying attention to the effects of my anger that I caught glimpses of my relationship with that anger.

Some part of me really believed that anger was somehow hurting the objects of my anger. Intellectually, I knew this was not the case, but some part of me felt that the revenge fantasies and the repeating the events over and over were real. In a sense, they were. The physiological and emotional response of recalling such events are indistinguishable from the events themselves. And we know that this is harmful to ourselves.

But when I was really paying attention, through my meditation practice, I started to see that I would pick up this anger and feel awful, and then feel awful about the fact that I picked up the anger in the first place, etc. But what was compelling me to pick up, hold, and identify with this anger? When I couldn’t find it, and I could see that there was no utility in doing so, it seemed as absurd as reaching down to pick up and hold onto that bee that’s right in front of me. It is sitting there on the flower. If I decide not to pick it up, it will eventually fly away and I will see the whole, beautiful flower. Will another bee come by for the flower’s nectar? Sure. But the more bees I see pass, the more I learn to appreciate that the beauty of the flower can be witnessed by letting the bee move on. And I can even view the bee. I can watch that bee, see what it does, and even see some beauty in it. There is no need for me to pick it up.

I also think of it like food. When you’re eating a healthy diet on a regular basis, you know what you feel like when you are eating healthy food. As soon as you shove your face with something awful, you immediately feel the effects and you might swear off ever doing that again. Why would you want to feel that crappy when there are so many amazing foods that make you feel great. Anger is that food that might be very tempting to fill up on. But now I know that I’ll pay for it later and will regret it.

I have led a pretty good life all in all. I cannot think of a time that I actually knew I was being discriminated against but not everything has always gone my way so maybe so and I was just blissfully unaware.

I don’t know anyone that hates me and I don’t hate anyone. There are those I do not care for and I have always had people who did not like me. I dealt with it by avoiding them as much as living in a social environment allowed and trying to remain civil when avoidance was not possible.

@EGGIE you turn it over to God “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.”

Reverse descrimination because I am an average, healthy, white heterosexual male from a middle class family.