Race
Recently, one of my friends was posting about race on tribe and asked for responses. My response was long and rambling and had more to do with my personal outlook than any of her questions. So I left it in the private section of my journal with a note-to-self: "Should post this eventually, but not until I edit." Here it is.
First, a little background, from a white suburban kid's point of view:
From when I was born until I was 5, I was around only family. My father has slightly darker skin than my mother, because he was in the sun more. When I realized that my mother’s best friend had much darker skin than Dad, my small brain jumped to a conclusion based on what it knew at the time. Mommy’s friend was in the sun a lot. She was from Belize, an island in the Caribbean.
My parents were always extremely careful not to use language or voice opinions that involved race in a prejudiced way. My parents did take me to all kinds of restaurants before I was 5, and my first experience with someone that was clearly of a different race was at a restaurant. My experiences with various races was pretty much the same. I had trouble understanding members of other races when they spoke, but they were always friendly, and they brought me food (special food that I couldn’t get at home). Later on in Kindergarten, I learned to play with dreidles, say Aloha, fold paper into boats, sing in French, and other little bits of culture from around the world.
It wasn’t until I started being educated that I learned there were problems between different races. With history class and sensitivity training in school and affirmative action policies in 4-H, race became a source of stress rather than good food and interesting customs.
Later on in life, after I started shaving my head (because I'm balding), I began to experience a tiny bit of what it means to be hated and feared for your appearance. A skin-head in combat boots makes certain people very nervous if they are meeting me for the first time. Other folks are ... overly friendly ... like we are family, or like we share some great secret. And there are people have thrown bottles and insults at me from moving cars while I was walking in my home town. I don't let these things bother me too much. I can always start wearing khaki's and ball caps instead of black combat trousers and rockband patches. My look is my choice, and I like it, no matter what other people think it means. But these experiences did wake me up and get me thinking.
So here are a few of my thoughts on race. I'm hesitant to call them viewpoints or opinions. I'll stick with thoughts.
As animals, our instincts tell us that we can (must) use visual cues in our environment to appraise situations and predict the actions of others. Our memory (conscious or subconscious) catalogs all our experiences, and we reference that catalog each time we view anything, new or not.
Many cultures use clothing, possessions and jewelry to display their values, status, and background. Take, for example, the guy with the gold band on his ring-finger and the fish sticker on the bumper of his mini-van. We can safely make one or two assumptions about that guy.
Even if I tried not to, I would probably treat mini-van guy much differently than the unwashed guy on the corner asking me for money. It's a defense mechanism built on memories and genes. The things that cause me the most stress make the biggest impression, and affect my actions the most later.
But remember, mini-van guy chose to post that sticker, and he wears that wedding band by choice, too. The unwashed guy may not have picked his situation on purpose, but if we clean him up and put him in a suit, the waiter at will probably seat him anyway, without awkward pause. Those are visual cues that can be changed.
Skin color, however, is a visual marker that is non-optional and permanent. It is always present, and by adulthood it will usually be a color the animal brain has seen before.
When I look at a black woman (African American, or what you will: no offense is meant here), my intellect wonders what she is like, encourages me to interact so I can respond based on what we may or may not have in common.
Meanwhile, my animal instinct floods my mind with images of several loud girls making fun of me in grade school, a challenging opponent from my youth in martial arts, and the *ahem* talented woman I ended up in bed with almost a decade ago. These images and the feelings that go with them, along with every other experience I've had with someone wearing that visual cue (darker skin, female) begin to affect my reaction and I can barely notice it happening, much less try to stop it.
But practice makes perfect, right? I battle with my animal brain each and every time I notice it making decisions for me. By the way, animal brain makes lots of bad decisions, and not all of them are about race. Most of them are about gender.
The trick (for me) is to remember to think about it. Most members of minorities ask me "How could you not!?" Almost all my early experiences with other races were positive. I was unbelievably lucky for that. I held onto my innocence for a long time, and in many ways, I'm still very naive. The sad truth is that a sheltered white kid doesn't have to think about race very much, and most choose not to.
Others ask me, "Why think about race at all?" I have a flexible mind and I love learning about other cultures. I view racism as evil. When I remember to look, I see the effects of racism everywhere. Racism hurts people and alienates them, it homogenizes cultures and starts wars. Thinking about racism as a problem is critical to ending it.
So, if the trick is to think about it, how does one remind another that he should think about race? More specifically, and this is what I’ve been leading up to: Do you think that humor is a good way to get people to think about race? About the way that members of different races see each other? Stand-up comics: are they part of the problem? Or part of the solution?
-E.
First, a little background, from a white suburban kid's point of view:
From when I was born until I was 5, I was around only family. My father has slightly darker skin than my mother, because he was in the sun more. When I realized that my mother’s best friend had much darker skin than Dad, my small brain jumped to a conclusion based on what it knew at the time. Mommy’s friend was in the sun a lot. She was from Belize, an island in the Caribbean.
My parents were always extremely careful not to use language or voice opinions that involved race in a prejudiced way. My parents did take me to all kinds of restaurants before I was 5, and my first experience with someone that was clearly of a different race was at a restaurant. My experiences with various races was pretty much the same. I had trouble understanding members of other races when they spoke, but they were always friendly, and they brought me food (special food that I couldn’t get at home). Later on in Kindergarten, I learned to play with dreidles, say Aloha, fold paper into boats, sing in French, and other little bits of culture from around the world.
It wasn’t until I started being educated that I learned there were problems between different races. With history class and sensitivity training in school and affirmative action policies in 4-H, race became a source of stress rather than good food and interesting customs.
Later on in life, after I started shaving my head (because I'm balding), I began to experience a tiny bit of what it means to be hated and feared for your appearance. A skin-head in combat boots makes certain people very nervous if they are meeting me for the first time. Other folks are ... overly friendly ... like we are family, or like we share some great secret. And there are people have thrown bottles and insults at me from moving cars while I was walking in my home town. I don't let these things bother me too much. I can always start wearing khaki's and ball caps instead of black combat trousers and rockband patches. My look is my choice, and I like it, no matter what other people think it means. But these experiences did wake me up and get me thinking.
So here are a few of my thoughts on race. I'm hesitant to call them viewpoints or opinions. I'll stick with thoughts.
As animals, our instincts tell us that we can (must) use visual cues in our environment to appraise situations and predict the actions of others. Our memory (conscious or subconscious) catalogs all our experiences, and we reference that catalog each time we view anything, new or not.
Many cultures use clothing, possessions and jewelry to display their values, status, and background. Take, for example, the guy with the gold band on his ring-finger and the fish sticker on the bumper of his mini-van. We can safely make one or two assumptions about that guy.
Even if I tried not to, I would probably treat mini-van guy much differently than the unwashed guy on the corner asking me for money. It's a defense mechanism built on memories and genes. The things that cause me the most stress make the biggest impression, and affect my actions the most later.
But remember, mini-van guy chose to post that sticker, and he wears that wedding band by choice, too. The unwashed guy may not have picked his situation on purpose, but if we clean him up and put him in a suit, the waiter at will probably seat him anyway, without awkward pause. Those are visual cues that can be changed.
Skin color, however, is a visual marker that is non-optional and permanent. It is always present, and by adulthood it will usually be a color the animal brain has seen before.
When I look at a black woman (African American, or what you will: no offense is meant here), my intellect wonders what she is like, encourages me to interact so I can respond based on what we may or may not have in common.
Meanwhile, my animal instinct floods my mind with images of several loud girls making fun of me in grade school, a challenging opponent from my youth in martial arts, and the *ahem* talented woman I ended up in bed with almost a decade ago. These images and the feelings that go with them, along with every other experience I've had with someone wearing that visual cue (darker skin, female) begin to affect my reaction and I can barely notice it happening, much less try to stop it.
But practice makes perfect, right? I battle with my animal brain each and every time I notice it making decisions for me. By the way, animal brain makes lots of bad decisions, and not all of them are about race. Most of them are about gender.
The trick (for me) is to remember to think about it. Most members of minorities ask me "How could you not!?" Almost all my early experiences with other races were positive. I was unbelievably lucky for that. I held onto my innocence for a long time, and in many ways, I'm still very naive. The sad truth is that a sheltered white kid doesn't have to think about race very much, and most choose not to.
Others ask me, "Why think about race at all?" I have a flexible mind and I love learning about other cultures. I view racism as evil. When I remember to look, I see the effects of racism everywhere. Racism hurts people and alienates them, it homogenizes cultures and starts wars. Thinking about racism as a problem is critical to ending it.
So, if the trick is to think about it, how does one remind another that he should think about race? More specifically, and this is what I’ve been leading up to: Do you think that humor is a good way to get people to think about race? About the way that members of different races see each other? Stand-up comics: are they part of the problem? Or part of the solution?
-E.