So you think you’re racism free? You think you don’t see color? You believe you see the humanity in a person and don’t see the color of their skin or the slant of their eyes? You believe that your parents raised you right and laid a foundation of values to see people outside of skin color? Okay, maybe so. Some parents do a better job of this training than others, and most who attempt this have good intentions.

Here’s the problem though: They all likely did as good a job as they could have, but they didn’t eradicate or stifle the racial survival mechanism buried deep in our nature – And that’s the point. Seeing differences is deeply rooted in our very nature. You do really see differences, you can’t help it, and you can’t stop it.

Let’s consider the survival mechanism for a moment: Initially as we surveyed the open Savannahs we had to work at observing our new world. It was not only new, it was complex. There were so many things we needed to heed every day – the old Chinese ideogram for opportunity and danger comes to mind.

Our focus received a major impetus when we failed to notice pertinent differences and someone either died at the hands of another or they were eaten. The survival mechanism kicked in really fast and hard, and over the millennia we perfected our abilities to discern differences and to pick out pretty accurately those things that would prove detrimental to our health and those that were benign. We weren’t always right, but mostly we were, and we survived. It became second nature and something that operated without conscious intent. We became more human as a result, and mainly we survived.

Today this functions pretty much without any input from us, at least consciously. Seeing differences which was absolutely necessary for our survival at one point, is now something that if we are conscious of it we can find useful in daily living.

Example: Say you’re walking down the street and a couple passes you in the other direction: He’s very dark skinned and she’s very blond with very fair skin (Hey, this is a stereotype that always crops up with this question!). Do you take a second look? Of course you do. We all do. It’s so ingrained in our nature to see differences, it’s involuntary and you couldn’t stop it if you tried. It just happens.

Is the second look racist? No, not necessarily. It’s simply just the survival mechanism kicking in because it picked up on differences. If one isn’t aware the mechanism is operating, that’s when a racial slur or some unkind thought pops into our minds. Knowing it is operative you can catch yourself and know that isn’t the way to treat another person and try to figure out where that thought came from. It’s not the second look that’s the issue, it’s what you think and then do as a result of that second glance that makes it racist or not.

Not long after Barbara and I were married we looked for an apartment to rent in Berkeley. We planned to stay in multi-ethnic Berkeley because of our mixed race marriage. I called a number I found in the classifieds and on my arrival was met by a man I presumed was the apartment manager. I asked if the apartment was still available, and he hesitated a moment, then told me that his wife had just rented it. Okay, so we keep looking.

We did continue and a week went by and I noticed the listing for the same apartment, so we went out as a couple. I told Barbara I thought it curious as I had been told the apartment was rented, and here it was still listed. I told her I thought the man didn’t want to rent to me because I was Japanese and he was obviously prejudiced. Barbara said, no, she thought I was overreacting. When we arrived, the woman answering the door looked at us, and after a quick conference with someone inside came back and said her husband had just rented the apartment. Thus ended Barbara’s education about racism.

We were in Colorado in 1993 for the graduation of our daughter from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and our kids convinced me to make a pilgrimage to the WWII concentration camp in the southeastern part of the state where my family spent the war years courtesy of the U.S. government.

On our way from Boulder to Granada, we stopped for breakfast at a little restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Here was the family, me, wife, son, and graduating daughter with her best friend from childhood. Here’s what walked into that restaurant: an obviously Japanese me, white wife, obviously mixed son, ditto for daughter, and daughter’s best friend with a shock of brilliant red hair, really fair skin and freckles. You can guess what happened.

There were a goodly number of people there, and all conversation stopped and the silence was deafening. All eyes followed us into the room. This was not unusual whenever we traveled as a family, especially outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. This time there was the deliciously puzzling factor of a fair skinned redhead that had to raise the question of how she fit into this already different family.

Were all those people racists? I hope not. Did they make judgments about us as a family? Of course they did. Were their thoughts curiosity or more malevolent? I don’t know, but I hope it was the former.

What does it matter with any of these questions? For me ultimately nothing, unless what they did as a result of what they thought might do harm to me or my family. Otherwise it’s a lesson learned about the survival mechanism and how it plays out on the playground – or not.

What you see and hear on the surface may or may not be the true substance of the matter. But the point here is that surface features are triggers for the racial survival mechanism, and it matters how we decipher the deeper meanings of the differences we perceive.

Our survival as a species even today depends in so many ways on our reading these meanings clearly, and in the mean time understanding how all this works within us hopefully will lead us to a point where we can sit down and have a descent conversation about race and how we treat one another – so with the Cheerios ad that prompted this thought puzzle for me.

How we treat each other is not just a matter of survival, but something to enhance our daily lives. Our collective survival mechanism has served us well in so many ways to this point, and it would be a good thing if we figured things out again and kept the streak going.

Peace, my friends…