I have never felt I was a racist. Even though I grew up in a lilly white suburb and never interacted with a black person except for a couple of days in Florida, until I went into the Army, I made it a point at least in my head that we are all equal. I can say this at least: I didn't like all the racist jokes that went around in the 50s, I never laughed at one and I never told one and that was about the extent of my active social responsibility.
I lived through the civil rights movement in the sixties very sympathetic to the cause, though I don't recall doing anything about it,except for sophomoric college discussions. Still I felt I was always on the right side of racism issue.
So I Moved to Alaska which has its own racial issues. One summer day I was driving through a lake district on the Kenai Peninsula looking for a place to fish. I had had some luck on Hidden Lake the winter before so we pulled in there.
There was one of those pickup trucks with a camper in the bed parked next to a picnic table where a family of black people sat enjoying a meal.
The immediate reaction that came to my non-racist mind was I don't want to fish here. It wasn't specifically because of the African-American family, it was because if they were there, the only fish around were probably carp, not exactly a rational insight in Alaska waters.
But you see as I grew up, I used to see black women sitting on camp stools, their stockings rolled down to below their knees and fishing for carp in the Buffalo River. In my mind black people meant carp and I don't ever want a carp.
At the same time I was totally embarrassed by that obvious racist thought even though no one until now knows I had it.
Thinking about it I would bet there aren't many of us who haven't had some such thought about someone of another race at some time or other and to that extent we are all racists. The object then is to admit it and then fight it within ourselves, like alcoholics trying to remain sober. They will always be alcoholics but they can do something about it by staying sober. Perhaps we are all racists and knowing that and admitting it, we can live better lives understanding it and doing what we can to fight it within ourselves, and in the process treat our brothers and sisters on the planet with a measure of respect and an honest attempt at understanding.
Some folks on facebook relayed similar thoughts on the subject. They are worth reading. I am adding them as I receive permission from the writers.
Gretchen Small i have been having that same internal dialogue with myself for some time. i was raised by parents who were very non-racist by the standards of the day---- but as the years roll by i have dug deeper into my subconscious responses---and yes, racism is embedded in me due to the culture i grew up in. i have tried all my life to not let that be who i am, but cultural fabric is woven deep into the psyche of every member of that culture. Tim, our children were raised in a more racially open milieu than we, and they give me hope. the MLK Dream could never come in an easy blink of conscious rationale. deeply embedded subconscious responses are persistent weeds that are only rooted out with patient effort. the passing generations sometimes falter backwards, but human evolution marches forward. if there is a Homo sapien species surviving into the next century, the fruits of our internal moral stuggles will bear fruit.
Sharon Wright LA Unified School District started bringing black kids from East LA to our high school by bus in the 1960s. We had a diverse student body: white Christians & Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, but no blacks until they were brought to our neighborhood. I had no black friends in high school but worked with black adults from age 17 on. Dated a black surfer in college who took 3rd at Huntington Beach one year; my father would have gone apoplectic had he known. So considered myself non-racist. Then I moved to Juneau, Alaska which in 1971 had a substantial Native population. It was more brown than white. Hmmm, whole new concept to accommodate. Moved around the state a bit and one night, flying into Fairbanks from Outside, I discovered I'd locked my keys in our pickup. My little guy & I were locked out in the cold & dark. I thought & thought--had wire in the pickup bed--and here came two black guys about my age. Hey! I said, "I've locked my keys in my truck. Can you help me?" "Sure," they said. Surveyed the wire, said, Yep, we can do this! One wiggled the window down just a hair, bent that wire around into a loop on the end, slipped it in and bent it around to go down to the lock (remember when there were door locks you could pull up by the knob on top?) and pulled it up. Thank you, thank you! Off they went and off we went. Then the little guy said, "Mom, how did you know those guys would know how to get into our truck?" Hmmmm, was I being a racist? I just read this to Dave & he said, Nah. If they'd been white, they probably would've known too. I helped Nick (a Native friend) break into his truck when he locked his keys in it.
Jan Williams Simone Here is an incident I remember. From a very young age I had and still have strong beliefs about how to treat other people. One day I was at Low Library at Columbia University, pregnant with my second child, and working on my master's thesis. I was really tired, so tired that I desperately wanted to close my eyes and sleep for just a little while, even though my chair was sort of in the middle of a room. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a young black woman digging through her bag set on the floor next to me, very near my purse and pile of books. There was a lot of carpet around her; she didn't have to be there. I deliberately thought to myself, if I pick up my bag and put it on my chair with me, she will be offended. So I didn't. The next thing I knew I was still sitting there but had clearly dozed off. I didn't even look in my bag. It was only later, when I went to pull out my wallet, that I saw it was gone. All of my old photos, including a precious one of my parents when they were young, my driver's license, whatever money I had, etc., gone. I never thought of myself as having any more than the mildest prejudices. What lesson was there to learn? It was to be more wary. But I don't think my new wariness was racially tinged, because thieves have no color. It was sort of a reverse prejudice operating in my mind - don't hurt anyone even if they might hurt you. Is that some sort of insidious reverse racism? If it had been a white woman kneeling on the floor next to my purse in the middle of a room, I would have been just as vulnerable. But maybe I would have moved the bag.... Becoming street smart - that is a lesson you usually learn the hard way.Betty Sederquist Our generation carries a lot of these racist undertones whether we realize it or not. I try to do the right thing, but my socially attuned daughters call out my missteps on a regular basis. Interesting to examine all of this. I grew up in a lily-white, conservative part of the country. My sometimes liberal parents bent over backwards to accommodate the rare black folks who came our way but had some interesting opinions on Jews. My French mother hated people from Algeria. This nonsense goes on and on.A friend sent this link to me.. It's a magazine article dealing with this subject. I couldn't manage to get the link copied but if you search How to stop the racist in you | Greater Good Magazine greatergood.berkley.edu. It's a good read and like a lot of things we worrry about in life, it's comforting to know others have the same anxieties.
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