by Fun With Mr. Fudge » Sun Aug 23, 2015 4:07 pm
Well I can't really relate to the article directly for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm a Chocolate American. But I can say that I encountered racially driven mistreatmen/preferential treatment from both white and black people during my upbringing which instilled some racial biases in me.
My family never ingrained in me some notion of how people of different races were supposed to act or that certain races were bad. But the black TV programs we watched and certain offhand comments from immediate or extended family did give the impression that white people were racist. I also did hear anti-white remarks from older black people (but if you grew up during the era of school segregation and were regularly attacked/harassed by whites, you might hate them, too). There were a lot of black kids my age who also weren't fans of whitey (sorry if that's offensive, I meant it jokingly), but many of them didn't like me either.
I wasn't one of those kids who spoke ebonics, and I was good at school and kind of quiet. When I went to predominanly black schools (so up until high school), a lot of black kids would mock me for seeming "too white" or just generally keep their distance. Of course some were awesome to me, but not enough that the whole "you're not black" thing didn't get to me. And then there were the weird black adults who seemed to see me as some shining example for the black community, also in a sense "one of the good ones" (which is nice but creates a kind of pressure that I've never wanted and haven't lived up to anyway).
A lot of white kids I knew, especially ones from middle class families, seemed kind of drawn to me and were defenitely more comfortable with me than with other, "more stereotypical," black kids. White adults (aside from cops or store employees who would ocassionally profile me) seemed to like me when they heard how I spoke and that seemed nice, but some would eye me with suspicion or not at all beforehand. That always gave me the impression that some white people kind of viewed me as "one of the good ones" or "not really black" (some white people I've met in my life have essentially said as much). Others were just awesome people who I think would have gotten along with anyone.
So the general lessons about race most strongly instilled in me could be summarized as "people look for reasons not to like you, and race is somehow an easy/prominent one." That and "if you're not a dick to me, I shouldn't care what you look like." I grew to kind of hate being identified by my race as anything but a description of skin tone. After all, I was pretty often rejected or at least held at a social distance by people who looked like (but often didn't talk or act like) me and were supposed to be "my people." On the other hand, though I was clearly on the receiving end of racism from some white people, whom I was taught to expect racism from, a lot of white kids were among the first to extend the hand of friendship. Those kids' white families allowed me to experience things I mostly didn't or couldn't living as a poor black kid (traveling somewhere by car, going to the beach, going on trips that cost significant amounts of money).
So I became a hodgepodge of egalitarian ideas and randomly surfacing racial biases. When I see a white cop eyeing me too long or get asked one too many times if I need help in a store I still get nervous. I sometimes expect white people to think I'm kind of stupid when they look at me (and the thing is I am kind of stupid, but not because of my skin color, so it gets confusing). But I also sometimes get nervous around groups of black people on the street if they remind me of individuals who used to have a problem with me and my "oreo" ass (also, when you grow up in places where gangs and shootings are a thing, you just get a bit nervous with groups of guys hanging out outside anyway). I worry that I will not know how to relate to black people who more closely fit the "urban stereotype." Thankfully, I got old enough and aware enough that I could think to remind myself of times people have violated my randomly racial expectations in positive ways. It acts as a kind of buffer against unfair assumptions, which from what I can tell don't occur much in my head these days because I've tasted many different flavors of awesome and asshole across different races and nationalities as I've gotten older.
All of these experiences also make me fairly comfortable with conversing with people who tell me that they used to (or partly still do) harbor negative feelings about people of a certain race, even my own. Not because I think it's good or OK but because prejudice is an inductive monster which plays man's natural inclination to seek patterns, and, ironically, doesn't discriminate in who it inhabits. Also, I appreciate the honesty and think those kinds of dialogues are important for getting past prejudice or at least keeping it in check. And who doesn't want to be the guy who can make a racist think twice about their prejudices?