My life as a racist

[Undertoad]

That "early silliness" thread is a great one. I would like to hear more personal stories about how we come to think the way we think.

From age 5 through age 11, I had two different best friends, and they were both black. (I'm white.) I lived in a neighborhood so integrated that one area racist described it as "checkerboard squares". This was the mid 70s, and race was the broiling issue in the country. Everyone was trying to deal with it. Nobody knew how to act.

At age 13 one of my white friends turned racist, copying his totally racist dad. And while deeply in my soul I knew it was totally wrong, for a while I played with the idea myself. I wrote a long essay for one class that was standard racism, invoking every single stereotype. I showed it to my racist friends to gain favor with them.

My whole life to that point had been color-blind. I didn't even realize that there was racism in the world. I knew people were enemies, but I didn't know why. My dark-skinned buddies were not different from me in any way that I could tell. But at that tender, early age, filled with confusion and the loss of innocence, frightened of nerdy loneliness, the call of any social connection was strong. And so, for a few months I was kinda sorta in the racist crowd.

The friendships with these guys broke down pretty fast, for other reasons. When it did, the racism that I had found within myself somehow became more visible to me, and I regretted it terribly.

At almost that moment, my mom got remarried to a guy who had an arts grant to live in northern England and compose music there. I was suddenly uprooted from this neighborhood where race was a huge and terrible issue... and placed into a society where everyone was white. But there was a difference: *I* was suddenly a minority of one, the "yank".

Being that kind of minority at that tender age, I did everything I could to bear it proudly. But to a lot of people, I was an offense without having done anything. As quickly as possible, I learned the accent and words and approach to completely pass as a local.

In the space of a short time of adolescence, I experienced being the oppressive hateful majority, and being the oppressed hated minority. Those lessons will stick with me forever.

Were you ever a racist? Were you ever oppressed? What did you experience as a kid that made you what you are today?

I've never really hated because of color, but I sure use racist slang all the time. Especially to Andrea, who is half Chinese. I call her a chink all the time. It's fun.

[Chewbaccus]

I was born and spent the formative years of my childhood in Bayside, Queens. Now, though there are of course other ethnicities represented in Bayside, the town is widely (and widely known) as Irish-Italian. Lots of Catholic churches in the town, though synagogues, mosques, and temples are not uncommon. Now, the inherent nature (and greatest thing, IMO) of New York is that everything is interconnected. One quick bus/subway/train ride, and you're in a Jewish neighborhood, a black neighborhood, Hispanic, Korean, on and on and on. This, incorporated with the fact that each of these neighborhoods has one thing over all the other, one thing that makes it unique, and thus, one thing that draws you in time and again, keeps the idea of racism down. Black, Asian, Hispanic, White, Arab, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, it made no difference to me at that age, and I assumed it to be the same the world over.

Then, when my parents split up, my mother moved us down to Plum, a suburb of Pittsburgh. This was like leaving Rome to dwell amidst the Huns, or so I thought it (when I knew what the hell that all meant). Pittsburgh is one of the most Protestant (and Protestant isotpes) cities in America, including the South. There are churches to the effect everyewhere, and even the local Catholic parish my family attended was, no offense, corrupted by the influence. It had curves, pastel color pattern, carpted floors, upholstered pews...I termed it "amateur Catholicism". I mean, I grew up with a Church that was a Church - tile floor, big thick wood doors, hard wood pews, and alabaster statues of people long dead all giving me a look of "Oh, boy, did YOU fuck up!" This just didn't gel with what I knew.

Further, Plum isn't the most diverse town on the planet. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Plum has a white-to-black ratio of 97:3. To put it simply, for every 97 white people in Plum, there are precisely 3 black people. And don't even bother with anything else. In my graduating class, there were three Asians and an Arab. That's it. And a few Jews, but they tried to keep it down, tried to blend, such that I knew of one in my class. Now this, to a kid of my background, was real strange. Not to mention that the town was very underdeveloped, like a rural community vainly trying to be a suburb. My best description was "It's a whole lot of farm, with a little commerce in the center. It's a socioeconomic donut." I mean, I was used to sidewalks, traffic, noise, culture, the smells of industry and foods from a dozen different places blending together, not...trees. My brother (who was in his soph. year of HS when we moved) flipped when he saw there were no fences around the Plum HS campus. Then he realized that it was because there was no other place inside walking distance to go.

To cap it all off...Pittsburghers in general and Plumites in specific are very very discriminatory people. I have a good friend of many years here, and he is racist. Not hate-speech, hood-wearing racist, but he and his family take a definite "guilty until proven innocent" attitude towards blacks. And it's like that all over, that small-town mentality, the idea that if you weren't born here then you have no reason to be here, and if you were born here, you have no reason to leave. I would watch as people literally stood in amazement at my mother when she said she moved here of her own choice from New York, like they couldn't understand why we would. Truth told, neither can I. It wasn't until we mentioned we had a friend who'd lived in Plum for years now that they kinda stopped challenging us, like we needed a fucking sponsor to come here. Even then, I was still treated differently, and this was kidnergarten! I still had my accent, I still called Coca-Cola and Pepsi "soda" instead of "pop", and this made people suspicious of me.

As time wore on, the accent faded (I don't really speak with any accent, unless I'm very emotional about something - yelling or giving orders and the like - then it comes pouring out) though the terms haven't changed. If I ever unconsciously call a Coke "pop", shoot me. Please. It'll all have been over by then. I never made an effort to adapt to Pittsburgh, in fact, as I grew older, I made it a point to flout the Pittsburgh accent, slang terms, and gave myself an identity in doing so. On 9/11, as we heard of the attack and then watched the towers come down, I noticed more than a few eyes giving me a once-over, wondering how I was taking this. A year later, I was approached by a history teacher to participate in a 9/11 remembrance ceremony they were going to put on, specifically because I was who I was.

When I realized that I was going to be in southwestern PA for a long time, I took a stand. I said "I am who I am, you don't like it, take your damn Primanti sandwiches and shove 'em up your ass sideways. I ain't changin'." I have known racism, I was oppressed, until I drew my strength from my background - changing a town's mind of me through sheer force of will. Now that I look back on it...I don't know who I would be if I hadn't, nor would I want to really be him. I'm Mike Twomey, a Scots-Irish son of the greatest damned city in the world. You don't like it, I got this neat trick with a sandwich I want to show you...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Growing up in the sticks there was only National Geographic ( I've got 'em all from '47 up) and anecdotal knowledge of anybody not white. The closest thing to different were the Jews I worked for and they weren't much different as far as I could tell. Of course at sundown on Friday they would say, fuck the sabbath, we got 35 acres of hay down and rain coming. Usually because the guy mowing got drunk and forgot to stop.

The one exception was an old black man that had worked for my Grandfather. When he got too old to work, Gramps gave him a few acres of woods with a one room cabin on it and helped him get signed up for Social Security. I liked to visit Old Howard because he had a picture of the poker playing dogs that I thought was about the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

Every year I'd go to the Eastern States Exposition which was like a state fair only much bigger. Every year I'd get a kazoo that looked like a mini trombone and play it incessently till it wore out.
When I was about 12, walking through the bazillion car parking lot with my kazoo, I met the first Black kid in my life. I stood there with my mouth open as he snatched my kazoo and ran. Caught me completely off guard. A racist is born. I don't think I hated them but certainly didn't trust them. Not a problem since there wasn't much contact anyway.

In 1963 I took a bus from Ft Lauderdale to Miami. I had a choice of Express or a local that made half a dozen stops. Of course I took the Express which had a Black driver and passengers whereas the local was all white. Man the evil looks I got from both, Blacks and Whites. I really didn't realize why they were so shocked but then again I didn't give a shit either.

Like most fat, dumb and happy whites, The Civil Rights Movement taught me the history the schools didn't. Now I understood why the Blacks in Georgia had shacks you could see right through while driving by on the way to Florida. And they didn't all live in slums because they were lazy.

While sympathetic in theory, I still had limited contact until I came to PA. Here I learned that not all Blacks are poor victims. Some are mean, some are assholes, some are stupid.
They're JUST LIKE US!!!! Except they listened to shit music.

About this time I aquired a Black sister-in-law. We became very good friends. But that's another story.

[Uryoces]

My Dad's family was racist. When my mom frist met her future mother-in-law, mom thought she was japanese! My dad's side has a lot of Somoan in it, which made their position all the more ridiculous. We raised a black foster baby for 6 months; J.C. was his name. That's all I remember. I thought it was cool that we had a new brother. He's somewhere in Tacoma now, I think.

We adopted my brother Daniel two days after he was born in '76. I was concerned that we got to keep him. Daniel's mother and a high-school sweetheart got a little more involved that the families wanted, and she was forced to give him up for adoption. She sent Daniel a few letters over the years, but he hadn't responded to them.

Things didn't finally come together so that they could meet until my Mom's funeral last year. It was a tearful reunion, but it went very well. Daniel and his mother meet about once a month, but he hasn't met the rest of her family yet. We're the only family he's known over the years, and he's our brother; we never think of him as black. I'd say he resembles Will Smith more than anyone. He does resemble us, too. If you spend enough time around people, you tend to think along the same lines, and the times you laugh or cry slowly etch their way into your face. We're still trying to get up to my Uncles cabin with my dad to some fishing. We have to do that before the summer lets up.

I blame Sesame Street for my level of color-blindness. I saw all these people of different colors and creeds interacting with Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Snuffelupegus, Bert and Ernie, and Kermit. I thought it was just the way things were.

My rascism didn't kick in until later, and even then it was more preconceived notions than anything else. It kind of turned out to be more classism than anything else. Po' folks of all kinds. Blacks, Rednecks, Ukranians; whoever. Anyone that thought "We" -- you know, "We" -- owed them anything. Other than respect, I don't owe anyone a goddamned thing. Uncle Sam wants to talk to me about that, though. I lived at my dad's and payed my community college tuition with a job at McDonald's for two years, then worked in kitchens for a while until I finally had my foot in the door in a tech support position. I had to earn all of that.

Success isn't shiny cars and houses, and I wish I could convince everyone of that. At the end of the day it comes down to 'How do I feel?' Pretty good most days. I think I made it.

[Whit]

     Heh, actually, I've been the only white guy in a crowd a few times in my life.
     When I was a small kid (age 6-7) I lived in a suburb of Jackson Mississippi. The town was unofficially segregated. This was done by having all the white kids go to fairly low-cost private schools, while the black kids went to public schools. My mother, of course, was a forward thinking liberal type, who would have none of this and sent us to public schools.
     I believe the ethnic breakdown of the school was 95% black, 2% white and 3%other. Many of the black students made sport of beating up the white kids. In groups of course, no silly one-on-one business. Running to the teachers, also mostly black, didn't help either. They would turn around and ignore our screaming while a group of kids two or three grades ahead of us literally carried us of to a corner of the playground.
     One result of this was leaving a racist streak in my brother that the military mostly broke him of many, many years later. It didn't affect me like that. I suppose this was because I had black friends and recognized that I hated people that were assholes, and that such people aren't color coded. Before anyone asks, no my black friends did not try to help me. This was an understood and accepted thing. No one at the school did anything to help and our Mom's (speaking collectively for all us white kids) never believed how bad it was. Even the mom who had to get the police to physically pry her son from the bed he was hanging on to, carry him to the car and take him to school.

     Decades later, living in near Dallas I had a job where I was the only white guy not in management in my area. Heck, I think I was the only white guy under thirty in the entire facility. The area I worked in was a black/hispanic mix. I worked in the storeroom under a black guy and had a hispanic dude working with me. No problem until my boss quit and either me or the hispanic guy had to take his place. The manager called us both up to his office and asked us both if we were interested. I said "Yes" and the other guy said he wasn't going to do alot of paper work. Since the job was mostly paperwork I got it. The hispanic guy transferred out saying it was bullshit that I got promoted over him. I also caught flack from the black people there until I explained what happened to a couple of the older people, who must've straightened out the others.
     I thought things were cool for a while then I noticed that the black guy that had been hired to work under me go from cool to bitchy. I asked him why and with a little goading he told me the other guys were making fun of him for having to do the "nigger jobs" like mopping the floor in our area and such. I said fine the next two days we would do all of the work together, I'd mop when he did and he'd help me with the paper work. The second day I'm settling into paperwork and I see him grabbing a mop. I called out to him to say it could wait we had to get this done and he said, "Fuck that, you do it. I'm gonna go clean some stuff up." Much politer than his response to the guys that started to bug him with the same bull as before when he came back by them later.
     So, again, things are good, I think. Then the entire staff starts treating me like shit for days. Won't even talk to me. Again I go to one of the older folks, she assures me that I know. I promise that I don't. Well, a white lady had recently been hired into a position of some authority. The weekend before she had accused the guy under me of being illiterate. He wasn't. I got pissed but neither she nor the guy under me worked that day. I come in on my day off to try to talk sensibly to her. Silly of me, she was a grade A bitch. We got in a rather loud argument and agree to take it before management Monday. Turns out she didn't work Monday. Anyway, within a few days she's fired. More from some of the other shit she started than the deal with me. Talk about a turn around, since my issue with her had been the most visible the entire staff thought I'd gotten her fired. One guy that hadn't said three words to me in the two years we worked together came to me for advice. I asked some of the people I did talk to regularly about it and they said, "You got that bitch fired so they think you're one of us." Friggin' weird...
     I have a lot more stories, including a discussion about "The Race War" I walked in on and joined and taking an unofficial poll to ascertain the validity of the statement, "The brother don't eat the pussy,"

[elSicomoro]

Interesting how this has come up as the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington is being commemorated this weekend.

As a child, I had friends of all kinds: Blacks, Asians, Arabs, Latinos, etc. And I always thought the minority kids were cool--like there was something special about them. It was a fascination of sorts. I didn't think they were inferior...just different in their look (and sometimes their native language). I can remember as a child hanging out with a group of black kids, yelling to everyone to vote for Jesse Jackson for President in 1984.

My parents were what I would call light-to-moderate racists: "nigger" was a frequent word around the house, though my stepdad wasn't calling for their destruction. My mom has had black friends as long as I can remember, but she would still utter the word from time to time.

And my friends and I used the various disparaging remarks--primarily "faggot" and "nigger." I don't think it was because we disliked gays or blacks though; I think it was more because of the power those words held.

As I got older, there were things I didn't understand: affirmative action, the NAACP, "It's a black thing...you wouldn't understand" t-shirts...I had what would be considered moderate-conservative views on those subjects. To the point where I thought I might be cheated out of things b/c I was white...and that's when I started checking "Native American" on anything involving race or ethnicity).

I got mugged twice by groups of black teenagers in the late 80s and early 90s. And while some around me were of the "those fucking niggers!" type, I never held those events against black people in general. This just happened to be 10 bad seeds that were black, nothing more. It did make me afraid of blacks for a while, but that subsided.

But as I went through high school and college, I became more "enlightened." I began to learn more about the history of various minorities and the struggles they had gone through. And I better understood why there are programs like Affirmative Action and why the NAACP exists.

From 1992-97, I worked for a retail chain called Venture (a midwestern Wal-Martesque store that went under in 1998...the sister store of Caldor). Most of the people I worked with during that time were black and female. And it was completely cool...I wasn't a typical whitey to them, and they knew I would treat them no different than white employees.

I think the defining moment of my convictions came in mid-1997. I was working for a bank, and I was sweet on this girl that came in all the time--a black girl. I offhandedly mentioned this to my mom one night, and joked that I wouldn't bring her around b/c of my stepdad. My mother had this look of horror on her face and replied, "What makes you think I would be alright with it?"

Oh my God...I was so fucking livid. But I coolly said that I didn't give a shit what anyone thought, that race wasn't a limiter in who I liked, and then mentioned the crush my mom used to have on a co-worker back in the late 70s--who was black. She didn't think I remembered that...ha!

Amazingly, there were no further problems with race after that. About 6 months later, I started dating Mimi (a Latina) and the 'rents had no problem with it. My parents liked her...and they didn't freak out when I told them we were engaged.

After Mimi and I broke up, I met Rho, who is black. And we've been together ever since. And my parents have never said one cross remark about that...though every now and then, they still come out of their face with boneheaded statements about blacks every now and then.

But if anything, I think it has opened my parents' eyes to all the myths and stereotypes that had pervaded their minds. They're smart people, but they're not intellectuals like myself. They don't think about grand concepts and what lies behind them, you know?

And in the end, they just want me to be happy. And they love Rho...she's like the best thing since sliced bread to them. It's rather funny.

Now, if sperm donor knew my dating history...well, that's another story for another day.

[warch]

I recall when this topic came up previously there was some consensus of the generational quality to racism. When thinking about how my understanding of race came about these are a few things I remember:

1960's I remember being a little girl and hearing a joke about how black people's hair was ugly, and I felt sorry for little black girls and glad I wasnt one. It was a joke, but also an assumption that was reinforced for me all over the place.

1970's There was just a handful of non-white students in my HS of 2000 kids. I remember in 12th grade this black guy came to talk to our social studies class. I remember he called us "lily white" and told us that we had no idea about the real world. I felt insulted, kinda, or ripped off, or something. I wanted to know the real world. And I realized that I was indeed, lily white.

1980s So in college I did discover a more diverse world. I dated other races. I had a housemate for two years, Kim, who was black, from an affluent (at least more than mine)family in Cleveland. I went home with her a few times, on breaks and we were pretty close. Her sister also went to the same college, but traveled in totally different circles. Her sister was into the black frat/sorority system. I remember one time the sister came over to the house (A student flop house, we were all freaky art geeks, mostly white) she was in some beauty pagent or something and wanted Kim to come to it. Kim said no,(this had mostly to do with pretty sister/ugly sister shit) and I remember her sister called her a fucking oreo, living with these white punks. Kim would talk openly about race, she was just figuring it out and it helped me too. I remember her telling me about her grandmother giving the girls the paperbag test, to see how light they were, how pretty they were. And she shared tales of scary car rides to visit relatives in the segregated south. Kim gave me her hilarious, awkward school picture from 1st grade. I still have it, it cracks me up. Last I heard she was working as a therapist in the criminal justice system in North Carolina.

The next event that sticks in my mind is being 22 and getting attacked by a black guy on the street. He was drunk with a little knife, grabbed me, I fought and got away, but it was a life changer. He was eventually charged with rape for other incidents. I cant deny that it made me wary of men, particularly of black men who are strangers, trying to talk to me. But I try to be aware of that reaction and judge it accordingly.

1990s I moved to Texas and experienced segregation like I had never before. I was, on several occasions, taken as Hispanic. Sometimes this was good, sometimes this was bad. One time a hotel human resources woman refused to give me a job application for a sales position saying flatly, that I was not qualified. (Even though she didnt know my name, let alone my experience.) She instead directed me to the kitchen. In this hotel Blacks were housekeeping, Hispanics were food, Whites were front desk, Arabs were banquets/events. Later after I started working in the kitchen and she found that I was "white" she asked if I wanted to apply for the sales gig. No.(especially since I could get free chorizo tacos and laugh my ass off in the kitchen with Sylvia and Maria) I hated that HR hag.

Now. I like living in the city with people of all ages and backgrounds. I like being near the University with the diversity of students from all over the world walking down my street. I'm still very white, maybe not so lily , but I still know very little about walking around in someone elses skin.

I'm sorry. I cant spell fer shit.

[Griff]

I'm a rural white... I must be a rascist.

[Uryoces]

Originally posted by Griff
I'm a rural white... I must be a rascist.

But Griff, you're screaming at all the humans.

[xoxoxoBruce]

all the humans.

Glad he's not yelling at me.

[Griff]

Originally posted by Uryoces
But Griff, you're screaming at all the humans.

Does that make me a self-loathing biped?

[Uryoces]

Originally posted by Griff


Does that make me a self-loathing biped?

Not at all! To quote a wiseman, Mr. Garret: "There are no stupid questions, just stupid people!" Many stupid people.

[xoxoxoBruce]

When the Eagles got a Black Quarterback, I'd hear the Monday morning quarterbacks at work talking about Sundays game.
Win = Great Quarterback
Loss = Dumb nigger
If the Black guy in front of me moves when the light goes green, then fine. But if he doesn't go, then he's a stupid nigger.
I don't think it's real racism, but lashing out with an appropriate insult. If the guy had an Italy sticker on his car, then he'd be a stupid Dago. Grasping for something I'd feel the offender would feel was an insult, if he could hear me.
If there's no identifying marks, then I settle for asshole. I don't have a problem with race, just idiots.

[darclauz]

Ya know... I don't care about black and white. But I lived on the west side of columbus, which is actually mostly mexican. we lived in a "Cheap" neighborhood, which was well on its way into a slum slide (and has now arrived). the guy who runs the complex is really pro-mexican (or whatever pc word i'm supposed to use here.... mexican american? latino? hispanic? i dunno) and its mostly mexican.

now...i know in my brain that all mexicans don't sit on the front stoop, drink beer, wear big cowboy hats, and manage to live without having a job. i know that most mexican moms don't let their kids run wild, leave their garbage on my patio, and play with dirt in my car (making sandcastles). and i know that MOST mexicans won't leave threats on my door cuz they think i'm somebody named "bruce" who owes them money (actually, i don't know who did that).

but when i left--to move into a 'lily white' neighborhood because i felt safe there--my head wasn't racist, but my heart was. i guess i just had so many bad experiences there with the mexicans...and never a good one... i go to macdonalds and can't communicate with the drive thru guy, because he only speaks spanish....i can't shop on the west side without running into some mom letting their kids go wild. i'm not as bitter about those years as i was, so maybe i just need some good to balance out the other ones.

interestingly enough, i had a good friend in that neigborhood that was black...and he was definitely a racist. he HATED the mexicans. funny how being hated because of your skin color (said the irish-italian) doesn't stop you from hating others.

so...in my head, i'm not. in my heart, sometimes i question.