The Unspoken Truth In The Paranormal Community

 We all love ❤ watching the 👻Paranormal Teams on TV, cable, and YouTube that are trying to make sense of Paranormal Activity are extremely popular. How do we choose from so many shows, and why do we choose them? Is it due to the locations they visit that we choose the show? They all make the rounds of well-known places anyway. In the same way, first year residents go round the hospital; they will all visit at one point or another. Do we choose the show based on personalities? All of them have one serious male, and usually one or two females, and they are all mixed with eclectic characters like a Ghost Hunter/Ex-Cop who fears ✈️️ airplanes and 🕷 spiders but has no problem entering a house with a 😈 demon presence, or an autistic guy who makes incredible inventions, or a guy who gets possessed every other episode. The Unspoken Truth about Paranormal Teams is that they lack diversity not by gender but by race. In some cases, it is understandable, such as when a bunch of good old boys from Tennessee who grew up together make a team, or friends who hang out at a barbershop in the inner city. The problem especially those in the media is that they are either All African Americans, All White, or All Redneck😅. The reason Ghost Brothers is a popular show is to a large part that they are African Americans, and this made them different. The fact that they are funny or "Down to Earth" is not the sole reason they have fans because all the shows have funny moments. Obviously, this won't earn me any popularity points, but I already don't have any because I'm Hispanic. Occasionally I offer my services to teams and individuals, and I rarely get invited unless they are already diverse in their teams. They make assumptions about who I am based on my name. While growing up, I told people my name was "Paul" to avoid being stereotyped as Hispanics or Latinos rather than being evaluated by my accomplishments. In Boy Scouts, I used to hear "Wetback" jokes and "Kunta Kinte" jokes since everybody knew me as Paul and most did not know my last name. I won a Trivia contest on a ship, and someone commented that it was unusual to see such a smart Puerto Rican. They may have thought it was a compliment. But it wasn't. Even in Corporate America, there was a VP, with whom I had never previously spoken, leave his office with a visitor late after the other employees had gone home and asked me with a smile if I knew what a "Green Card" was. Rather than take the bait, I answered that the card was a standard program code that IBM distributed back then. You could tell he was surprised. I kept it professional. After an extended period, when my direct manager wanted to give me a lower bonus than the others, who were all coincidentally white, that same VP interjected and spoke up at the Bonus Decisioning Meeting, stating that he saw me working long hours and that I was good at my job. I only found this out afterward when my direct manager confessed to me in my post bonus review that he wanted to give me a lower bonus, supposedly because I was new to the team and the bonus pool was limited, and he was overruled. So, this is a perfect instance of a Lotus coming out of the Shit situation. I know it comes across as me taking this lack of diversity personally due to my experiences, and don't get me wrong, you are right and wrong. I love the unique groups. But I would also love to see a group of diverse people investigating the paranormal. Studies have shown that diverse groups are more successful. Solutions and methods can be shared and help expand an investigator's tools. Even those in media with their homogenous groups can try to bring in guests that will help diversify their team and mutually increase each other's methods and knowledge.  Unfortunately, that only happens in movies (Ghostbusters) and TV (Evil). For now, paranormal teams will be like America, Segregated, and/or "In Closet" Racism. I know this is my opinion, supported by facts, but it's the one freedom and right I can control. Raul "Paul" Torres, Founder, Tower Paranormal Investigations