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:
Darksoul 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:
