our own "ism"s

[raedyn]

I live in a racist city. Amongst the white people here it seems to be socially acceptable to complain about the no-good-welfare-riding-natives. I think in parts of the US there is a similar attitude towards African Americans. I don't buy the rhetoric. I never have. And I often challenge people ranting non-sensically about it.

I've long prided myself on being open-minded and non-discriminatory. I grew up in a home enviroment that embraced and celebrated diversity and this is an important part of my self identity.

As a kid - even a teenager - I didn't differentiate between people of different skin colours. But I'm starting to think being exposed to this backward-thinking stupidity (sorry to be jundgemental, but I really have no respect for the attidues I'm talking about) is affecting me.

I question myself all the time now. I've caught myself having thoughts that, if I heard someone say them, I'd tear them apart. I've caught myself locking my doors when a couple of Aboriginal teenagers walk across the street in front of my car downtown at night ... then wondering "would I have done that if they were white?" Little things like that.

I'm not a ranting raving racist or anything, but I don't think I treat everyone the same way anymore. I TRY to, but I don't have the same comfort level with everyone. I'm not sure it's any better to be the quiet racist or homophobe or whathaveyou than the lunatic fringe. It's still discriminatory. It's still perpetuating the myths. It's still wrong. Why the change? How can I combat this in myself? I don't want to pass this on to my kid!

 

[raedyn]

I guess my question is

Have you experienced something like this before?
How do you try and challenge yourself about these things?
How do you avoid developing these prejudices?
How do you help your kids 'tune out' the other influences?

 

[Feisty Mouse]

Hey raedyn ~

I can't answer the kids question, but I do know that the most important thing is to be honest with yourself. Questioning what you are saying/thinking, reflecting upon it - these are good qualities.

Do you mind if I ask where you live? I know that different local environments can really change one's attitudes about people. It's difficult to counter all by yourself.

 

[shesulsa]

Hi raedyn.

I really feel your pain. I grew up in Los Angeles and went to private church school through 8th grade, so it was nothing for me to be in school with mixed races - and since we studied Christian faith, I never thought twice, really, about my friends being of different skin color. So although I grew up in LA, I was highly sheltered and didn't really get the full brunt of the race gap until later when my friends started joining gangs and calling me all kinds of names consistent with their respective new surroundings. Then they started getting on drugs, getting pregnant, getting in fights, and getting killed.

I liken it to watching my father battling cancer - I'm not sure which is harder - to actually fight it yourself or watch helplessly by, unable to do a darn thing.

I lock my car doors all the time, because there are white gang bangers where I live now (eastern bloc and retaliatory generic white gangs) and I do challenge my thinking along the same lines as you outlined here.

My daughter is afraid of "Russians" because she "knows they're mean." She's basically afraid of anyone who gives her the "uh-oh" feeling.

We talk about racism and its impact on society a lot. I think with all the discussion we have, she is fairly aware that skin color hasn't much to do with it - that it's more about one's attitude about skin color that makes the difference.

I challenge everything I ever think about anyone, because I think it's my responsibility as a human being to do so, and I encourage my kids to do it too.

I try very, very hard to refrain from placing judgements on people - even those who perform the worst crimes.

I try to keep discussion - all discussion - with my kids on this wide open and non-judgemental.

 

[Darksoul]

-Would it be correct in saying I'm racist against racists? Probably not. I'll admit to having my prejudices somedays. You can't worry about having a thought slip into your mind, like the example you gave, your gut reaction to lock the door. I do it all the time when I'm driving home from the club late a night through certain areas. Whats going to happen if I come to a red light, and there are people milling around, and they surround the car and open the door and drag me out and kick my...the point is, we are all human first. If you can understand and live by that basic principle, you won't have a problem. It really isn't about race, its about paranoia. What will this person do? Well, you only have so much control over it, depending on what they do. Whats really important, even if you are having these thoughts, is what are YOU going to do abou them? These thoughts will not lead you to join the local hate groups or anything like that. Remember that hate is learned, one is never born with it. As for your kids, you do what you have to in terms of teaching them survial skills, which can be linked to dealing with others or dealing with a threatening situation. Protect them, as you would yourself.


A---)

 

[MA-Caver]

When I was growing up in Vienna VA. a (then) tiny suburb of Washington D.C. the neighborhood was predominately white. My elementary school was predominately white, so much so that I can't recall remembering one black kid that was in the same class as I was. I do remember one Asian kid but that's all.
Then as part of the luggage my family moved to middle Tennessee and BAM nearly 60% of the kids were black. I had to learn a whole new sub-culture there and got into a LOT of fights. This was upper-grade school to junior high. Eventually I got around to "understanding" the racism that was going on. In fact I recall my father (who WAS racist at the time) telling me to avoid any contact with dem n----- , being the good boy that I was I did.
Then in my mid-teens my mother passed-away and I was shipped off to Texas (Dallas) to live with my eldest brother and his wife while our father went through his long grieving process. The love story between my father and my mother is a whole other story in-of-itself.
Anyway, now I have not two distinct sub-cultures to deal with but four. This time being Hispanic and Asian as well as Blacks and the big city Whites.
Got into a lot of fights there as well. In Tennessee my Martial Arts experience was started there and continued in Dallas (and beyond...).
After a bit I learned to adjust and adapt for survival reasons. But in my heart I still hated and mistrusted.
Ironically, after a year or two of that nonsense, one of my closest friends ended up being a black guy who taught me Shotokan<sic> Karate techniques whenever we were off work. He was a brown belt at the time and I learned a lot over several months. We were good friends and shared good moments/times together but that...race thing was in BOTH our ways on a subconcious/subliminal level. But at least I learned that not all blacks are bad mofo's thanks to my interaction with him and he being just the good guy that he was.
My older brother introduced me to a group of hispanics that turned out to be a great bunch of guys and friends as well. Oh-kay, toss that ism out the window too. I also interacted positively with some Asian fellas as well.
I let go of whatever racist stuff that my father taught me and happily I learned that my father did too. I was no longer threatened with being disowned if I even kissed a black girl. Silly but true.
Time rolls on and I found I still had that deep-deep inner distrust, and hatered of color that I acquired as a kid. It wasn't strong but it was still there, waiting to raise it's ugly head whenever I had a bad encounter with someone of color. At least until I ended up in (alcohol/drug) recovery and shared a half way house with (again) 60% of the house population being men of color. Fortunately I didn't get into any fights with them at all.
Those guys taught this white-boy how to dance and how to dance...well and also on a much deeper level taught me that there - is - no - color. We were all the same, that even the best and worse of us are prone to addiction and losing everything that we had and that addiction was color-blind. That it will kill indiscriminately. I've lost both white and black friends to relapse-overdoses.

One of those guys even invited me to a family BBQ where I was the only white guy there. That, my fellow MAs, was indeed an eye-opener and that experience finally removed whatever bricks and mortar I had deep-deep inside that made me any kind of racist. The guy's family took me in as one of their own...even if it was just for that afternoon.

Time goes on again to prove the point (to me) that I had grown beyond my (bad) teachings, was when a friend goes off on a LDS mission and comes back engaged... he calls, says that he's engaged, I say congrats! He hesitates...then says ... "she's black"... I respond with "...is she pretty??" he answers..."well duh, yeah dude...beautiful" I close the discussion with..."so what's your point about her being black?, When am I gonna meet her?" He later asked me to be the photographer at his wedding and I've met her family on road trips with the two before their beautiful twins were born. We're still great friends even as I type.

I agree with Darksoul when he said:

Remember that hate is learned, one is never born with it.

and that most excellent movie "American History X" verified what I learned prior to seeing it. That our parents/peers/whomever are mainly responsible for teaching us our attitudes towards our fellow man while we are still young and impressionable. My father taught it to me and we both learned to see beyond that and our lives are much better definitely.
I recall chatting with some of those guys in recovery where racism was a topic and found that their daddies and mommies taught them to hate "those fokken white people because they're always bringing the black man down".
Same goes for all the other people of color.
Now-a-days I joke that I'm not white (though I am of Irish/Norwegian descent)... I'm beige actually.

One word more, I've stated this in another post I think, somewhere here, that I am now against the term(s) African-American or Mexican-American or whatever. To me being 8th or 9th generation being born in this country I'm simply an American. Though my father's ancestors come directly from Dublin Ireland... I don't call myself an Irish American. Same thing I think applies to those of color. If they are born in this country and thier parents born and their grandparents and as far back as their great-grandparents being born here... they're Americans and that's it.
True we have many immigrants still coming into this country (and helping in their small ways to make it great). And that's fine with me if they want to call themselves German-Americans, African-Americans or Mexican-Americans or wherever they came from... becuase the first country shows their origins and the second their home. Their children born here should be referred to as Americans (if their parents have legal citizenship). That's my two bits on the whole ISM thing.
We can listen to our inner base misgivings and continue to be wary, distrustful, hateful to our fellow Americans of color; or we can simply look past the skin and do as MLK once dreamed... "judge a man by the content of his character". The choice has been and always will be... ours.

:asian:

 

[TonyM.]

Raedyn, you don't happen to live in Boston do you? I've heard more racist retoric from bostonians than anywhere I've ever been in my life.

 

[kenpo tiger]

Keeping yourself aware of your surroundings and safe is one thing; to start equating it to race is quite another. Common sense vs. beating yourself up because you're out-thinking yourself on the race issue.

I grew up in an integrated town, attended school with African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians from grade 3 onward. Freeport was infamous during the four years I attended HS for race riots, instigated by the fraternity boyzz (aka white gangs, but of course there's no such thing, right?) - 1968-1971. I was merely a spectator throughout, despite being challenged to fight a few times. Was able to walk away due to talking myself out of the situation once, and my [black] friends coming to my defense the others. Has this marred my perception of non-whites in any way? Nope. Not then, not now. My husband grew up in the projects in Queens, NYC and didn't have any white friends until HS, when his parents moved to a different neighborhood in order for him to attend a specific school. When we got married, we chose the school district in which we now live for a few reasons: size (small - a couple hundred students per class), ethnic diversity (you name it, we got it), and quality of education. Doesn't mean there aren't problems in Paradise. There are, but our sons grew up color-blind and ethnically-blind (religion included here), which was what we wanted. The point wasn't to bundle them up in an unrealistic environment but to have them know that there are all kinds in this world and people are people.

 

[Eldritch Knight]

I may be drifting from the main point of this thread for a bit, but bear with me please.

Both of my parents are Indian, and I was born in the Middle East, so when my family moved to the States, it was natural for me to refer to myself as Indian. However, when I got my United States citizenship, I came to the realization that "Indian" doesn't fit me anymore, and I just refer to myself as American. Though I had a pretty liberal education and didn't experience any severe racism from my youth, I do get a lot of out-group mentality from white Americans. Though I speak perfect English with an American accent (never learned it any other way), almost every white American I meet asks me where I'm from, with regards to country. When I respond "Virginia", it usually catches them off-guard, and they specify "what country originally?".

I think it speaks for a majority of Americans when the stereotype of "being American" is very distinctly racially bound (to Caucasians, blacks, and to a lesser extent, Hispanics), and that breaking past this stereotype is very difficult for most. From what I see, despite the immense racial and cultural diversity in America, this typecasting, generally put forth by the media, is holding us back culturally.

 

[MA-Caver]

I may be drifting from the main point of this thread for a bit, but bear with me please.

Both of my parents are Indian, and I was born in the Middle East, so when my family moved to the States, it was natural for me to refer to myself as Indian. However, when I got my United States citizenship, I came to the realization that "Indian" doesn't fit me anymore, and I just refer to myself as American. Though I had a pretty liberal education and didn't experience any severe racism from my youth, I do get a lot of out-group mentality from white Americans. Though I speak perfect English with an American accent (never learned it any other way), almost every white American I meet asks me where I'm from, with regards to country. When I respond "Virginia", it usually catches them off-guard, and they specify "what country originally?".

I think it speaks for a majority of Americans when the stereotype of "being American" is very distinctly racially bound (to Caucasians, blacks, and to a lesser extent, Hispanics), and that breaking past this stereotype is very difficult for most. From what I see, despite the immense racial and cultural diversity in America, this typecasting, generally put forth by the media, is holding us back culturally.

Yes, indeed it is. Welcome to America by the way from my neck of the woods.
But other people of color complain about this as well. Though some stereotyping of various races is less than others it's still there. At almost 230 years old this country is still immature in that area. Our less than exempliary history says so.
The media and our parents and our peers helps (or hinders) us to get past these stereotypes. More and more races that I'm seeing are breaking barriers... but they have a ways to go I'm afraid. The only hope I see in wiping out racism in America is through our children and their children and even their children. The civil rights movement was a definite positive step in the direction that we as a country need to move towards. The ball still needs to keep rolling.
Yet the minorities do need to do more (and they are) to help break the stereotyping. It's gonna take time. Just how much remains to us and our willingness to change our attitudes for the sake of our children and the future generations of this country.

 

[raedyn]

Raedyn, you don't happen to live in Boston do you? I've heard more racist retoric from bostonians than anywhere I've ever been in my life.

Nope, not Boston. Canadian prairies, actually. I live in the capital city of my province, but it's just a glorified small town.

 

[raedyn]

I think it speaks for a majority of Americans when the stereotype of "being American" is very distinctly racially bound (to Caucasians, blacks, and to a lesser extent, Hispanics), and that breaking past this stereotype is very difficult for most. From what I see, despite the immense racial and cultural diversity in America, this typecasting, generally put forth by the media, is holding us back culturally.

I /think/ Canada is a little better about this because we are (generally) proud of our immigrant population. Diversity something we claim to greatly value as a nation. But I might not be in a position to say this, being that I am a member of the priveldged 'in-group' - the white/beige majority. (Proud to be 8th generation Canadian.) Maybe I'm fooling myself about how welcoming we really are.

 

[Rynocerous]

I /think/ Canada is a little better about this because we are (generally) proud of our immigrant population. Diversity something we claim to greatly value as a nation. But I might not be in a position to say this, being that I am a member of the priveldged 'in-group' - the white/beige majority. (Proud to be 8th generation Canadian.) Maybe I'm fooling myself about how welcoming we really are.

No Raeden, you are not fooling yourself! I am a dual citizen, born in Canada with my American status through my father. I was never really patriotic about being Canadian until I joined the United States Army. It was then that I realized how lucky Canadians are as far as being able to live in a beautiful, free country, as diverse as ours. I am personally very proud of the fact that our doors are open to whomever may think that their lives would be better off in the Great White North. I must say anyone who wishes to become Canadian, welcome. Don't get me wrong though I'm still equally patriotic to my American heritage.



Cheers,

Ryan