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diaphane -> RE: Are WE racists? (7/7/2006 5:40:19 PM)
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I've got stuff to say here, but it's all garbled in my head. I am a reformed racist. My father and his side of the family are big racists. When I grew up, my mother and father divorced... I lived with my Mom. My mother sent me to mostly black schools (I being white). Whenever I would mention to my father or his mother (Grandmother) that I'd played with someone at school or had a conversation with someone... their very first question was always "Is he/she black?". Pissed me off! That shouln't matter! Then I married a racist when I was 17. It ate at me the way he saw the world. M.C. Hammer was a BIG celebrity back then and my husband (Ex-husband, now) would say how he wished he could get ALL black people (okay, he didn't say black people.. he used a word that I will not!) together at an M.C. Hammer concert and blow the place up. I stupidly asked, knowing I couldn't reason with him or change his mind, "But, what about the women and children?". His reply? "Lice breeds Lice."
When we separated, I went to college and met a woman who changed many .... NO, she helped me to change many aspects of myself. She was a catalyst for change. She would pose questions and scenarios to me, about faith and life and, yes, racism. It would piss me off when I would try to tell her a story about someone I'd met "This asian lady I met at the gas station...." and she would interrupt me and ask me "What does her race have to do with anything?" Once when my son woke up with spots all over, I called the pharmacy to find out if he had Chicken Pox. I told my friend when I got off the phone that the "Black pharmacist said...". She went laughing through the house saying how I could tell what color someone was over the phone! But the point came through. And I recalled situations where I would be near black people, men especially, and I would move over so as not to be so close. I had lived with racists all my life but never realized that I, myself, was one of them. I love the song "Coming out of the Dark" by Gloria Estefan because of that friend that I learned so much from. I feel as if she led me through the dark into the light... a lot of realizations about myself.
In any case, I thought I was going to just shoot down the OP's post completely. But then I realized, there is a validity to SOME of it. Now here comes the confusion from my brain. On the one hand, it's true that things are lop-sided. Other races get holidays and scholarships and colleges all to their own, and the white race doesn't. And in one way, I can see that this is unbalanced. In this day and age, there shouldn't be a need for all of these things. But some of them, I believe, are still needed. We have to realize that, yes, "ghettos" do raise a lot of black citizens. This is one of the reasons that some of these things, like Black History Month and the United Negro College Fund, are important. Also it's important to remember that a lot of minority races have been, and still are in some ways, down-trodden. It's important for them to learn a sense of pride in themselves and their community. Maybe it's just me, but I don't believe that we, as white folks, have a lack of pride in ourselves as a race. (individual self esteem issues not included.. many people, of all colors, have that problem) Also, I don't know the statistics on this, but generally speaking I don't think white people are the victims of a lot of arrests based on color alone. (though I'm sure there are a few out there, there are always exceptions) Nor do white people generally have trouble catching a taxi late at night. In other words, there are still a lot of inequalities out there. And black, latino, etc people are still in the minority and treated as such in many ways.
Let me try to finish this up. I think that as long as our nation is still unbalanced, we're going to have a need for these over-compensated systems to make up for it. Do I feel ashamed of who I am as a white person. Absolutely not. Do I feel it's my responsibility to make up for the past wrongs of my ancestors? I dunno. I'm torn on that one. In some ways yes, in some ways no. I'm a girl of contradictions I suppose. I haven't got it all figured out. Do I feel we, as the white race, should have pride in ourselves? At this moment I'm saying no. I think we spend far too much time bitching about "They have more cookies than me" and "It wasn't me." instead of taking responsibility and trying to grow and learn. That's not all of us, for certain. Probably not even most of us. But there are some loud ones that get heard a lot anyway.
As for me, I've still got a lot of growing and learning to do. =)
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