For longer than I can remember----my mom loves to tell the story of my 5th birthday party, which I can't really remember---I have had diversity in my friendships. My mom said I could invite over some kids from school and was surprised when my friends consisted of the United Nations...an Asian girl, an Indian, an African American and a caucasian too. Whenever I had talked about my friends I had never mentioned anything about their race...because it doesn't matter.
Even though most of both of my parents' families were bigots, it never changed how I felt about people who were different than me.
In college I wore a Anti-racism pin proudly. I was once stopped in a grocery store by a very large black man...he just kind of pointed at my shoulder and said "Cool pin". I remember this incident because I wonder what my facial expression showed...because while a black guy doesn't scare me---a really tall, muscular stranger of any race can be intimidating when you are shopping alone in Philadelphia!
I went to college in the late 80's. Some of my friends lived next door to a gay man who was in the early stages of AIDS. It never occurred to me to be anything but nice to him, and there was still a lot of misinformation about how the disease spread.
A cousin of mine started dating a black guy. It was interesting to watch how the family accepted him. He was very dark skinned, no denying he was a black man. Yet, he was okay. I never understood and still can't understand the mentality that you can accept ONE person out of a group you dislike just because they are suddenly in your "circle". Why can't you see that if perhaps this one is okay maybe, just maybe, all of the others are as well? Maybe all of your previous stereotypes and misgivings are outdated lies passed down to you by ancestors who just didn't know any better. Why can't YOU stop perpetuating racism? Because even though they accepted her boyfriend, in private they still bad mouthed the black people they worked with or saw in the city. Not knowing the person just where they lived and how they dressed...and judging based on that.
It's hard to not feel like you condone that behavior if you are around it and keep quiet but it's even harder to make people like that see how wrong their thinking is. I am really glad that society has at least come far enough now that most intelligent people dare not voice those opinions unless they are sure they are in similar company. I say that because my husband had to witness on a regular basis people who don't quite get that not everyone is a bigot, perhaps they don't even consider themselves bigots. He had customers come in all the time using rude terms to describe the President. They would talk about the gay teller who used to work there with very politically incorrect terms. How do you handle that? The customer is always right? I don't think so. This also happened to me at my last temp job. As I felt my face getting redder and redder with the discussion of how perverted homosexuals are... I finally said "You DO realize my best friend is gay, right?" And knowing they were Catholic went off on a rant about the real perverts, priests....hey I'm a red head --don't you know the stereotype? We are hot headed...don't piss us off!
Back to college....I was harassed one night riding the subway alone....There were 4 or 5 black guys, one very obviously drunk or high. He decided to torment me...calling me names, assuming I was racist and finally telling me I was going to give him my leather jacket before I got off the train. Well...that wasn't going to happen because I had just bought it on my new store credit card, I certainly wasn't going to be stuck paying for something I didn't own anymore! I just ignored him, looking around for help from other riders, most avoided eye contact. I decided it would be much safer to get off the train earlier than my regular stop. As I went to exit the doors, he came up behind me and grabbed hold of my jacket "Where you goin' white girl, I told you that jacket was mine", I struggled and luckily the jacket was zipped, so he couldn't get it off of me, the doors started to close and I fell hard onto the concrete, spilling a bag of groceries and bruising my knees really badly. The subway attendant ignored me but a man wearing a sweater vest came up and helped me...a black man, this becomes important later. He asked how he could help me, I said I wanted to call my boyfriend. He realized I couldn't dial and couldn't really talk, he took the phone from me and said "I got your girlfriend in the subway" to my hysterical boyfriend who had only gotten sobs out of me before the guy had taken the phone. He asked if I wanted him to wait with me on the street level and for some reason I thought it might be safer to wait below where at least the attendant could help me if this guy turned out to not be so nice after all. Turns out he was a law student at Temple. So my boyfriend shows up carrying one of those "clubs" you used to use to lock your steering wheel...he's swinging and yelling at the guy who was helping me (as if the would be mugger waited around to get beat up!).
I ended up being fine, just some nasty grease spots on my pants and 2 badly bruised knees.
The point of that story--only ONE of the guys was harassing me. I didn't use this as justification to decide that ALL black people were bad. This is the mentality my boyfriend had...because his dad had been murdered by a black guy...so he storms into the subway after hearing a black man's voice saying I got your girlfriend and assumes the worst. I refused to use one incident to change who I was. I looked at the fact that 1 of 5 guys was an ass, and he was drunk. I have been harassed in different ways a lot more times by drunk white guys. Plus my savior was black, do I just conveniently forget that?
Stephen Colbert jokes that he doesn't see color. I don't really either, I would make a horrible witness. I am more likely to remember the hideous shirt you are wearing than remember what color your skin is. Or if you have a freaky haircut. You have to have something really remarkable about you for me to remember any detail...and your skin color is just not remarkable to me.
I don't want to get political but I find it funny that a certain political party loves to defer to the Constitution about this or that. They want to talk about what are forefathers intended this country to be. They forget are forefathers were racist slaveowners. America SHOULD be a society were everyone is treated equally and yet there are still a majority of states that allow you to refuse service to homosexuals...I mean seriously WHAT THE FUCK?? Why do people refuse to see the parallels between this and the whole whites only fountains and all the other ridiculous shit that went on not that long ago.
Why are we concerned about chemical weapons in Syria, while ignoring that Russia should NOT be allowed to host the Olympics? Why are we even in ANY country's business when we still have shit to fix here regarding civil rights.
So I covered the racism and the bigotry.... what about the mean people... I really don't want to use the term mean people....dickheads, asshats, douchebags, twatwaffles, morons, idiots...they all seem more appropriate...the people who think that any group deserves less than they do...THOSE people are the ones I don't like...round them up and send them to the moon....they can live in their all white, probably mostly male...although there sure are a number of douchebag women I could name right off the top of my head...I am so glad that we are forcing THOSE people into a closet...a closet of hatred, where they can quietly seethe that gay marriage is going to be allowed everywhere, they can blindly think that racism against black people is history and maybe just one day they will all die off and we can finally have a truly equal society!
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