I'm Verklempt...
I'll give you a topic: Racism is not a Cancer but a Parasite - discuss.
I've been fortunate - so many of my race-based incidents have been on an individual level, peer-to-peer - people, usually minors, who didn't like me for a lot of reasons, but race/ethnicity was the easiest thing to attack, so they did. I've been punched, bruised, intimidated, and insulted, but I haven't been hospitalized, or fired, or jailed.
Insitutional racism (the intrinsic bias that is part of the fabric of our justicial, political, and socioceonomic system), or overt racism by those in authority, is of course always harder to prove. There are a few incidents where the personal and the institutional converge, and the one that still bugs me is the one that happened in the Deep Deep South. The thing that bugs me is that I'm not sure what I would do differently today. Most things, I can see where I (mis)handled things. This one leaves me flummoxed.
*cue Sophia voice* Picture it - Southern Georgia, 1997 (ish). A pack of environmental science students (all female) and their professor's kid (11 YO boy) are walking through exhibits at Okeefenokee Swamp. We'd done a fairly cool guided boat tour earlier in the day, passing several groups of people in canoes, off and on. The non-National Park part of the park has trails (with real unfettered basking 'Gators that you must walk around), indoor AC-ed hutches with educational info, and outdoor pens of native wildlife. The pack of us are walking down the trail, and 2 twenty-something guys are behind us. We stop at the mini-deer pen (cue girly "awwwws") and the guys behind us make mime rifle-shooting. In memory, one of them made eye-conmtact then, but I wouldn't swear under oath. We walk into an indoor exhibit - they're there. A few of us go to exit by the same door - they're still there, outside, chatting. I don't know exactly why that seemed weird to me, but I asked an older friend to get everyone together and leave by the other door.
Damned if they didn't follow.
I registered the "uniform" the Dynamic Duo were wearing: close-cropped, almost military hair, white shirt, blue jeans. One shirt had an elephant humping Congress, which also read "Take America Back the Right Way." Why did "uniform" come to mind? Because of one St. Joe's nun in my lily-white and token-brown high school, who bothered to cover hate groups in a social justice class. She'd said that some white supremacy groups go "undercover" in the most innocuous clothing possible, hence the blue jeans and white T. Does that fit a lot of people? Absolutely. Something about their attitude, their swagger, maybe, made them register as a threat.
We start walking down the trail, and they're following. Someone mentioned that they'd seen the two of them in a canoe when we were on the boat tour, and they'd tried to talk to the girls in one boat. Then one of them catches up to us, and tries to put a Coke can in the 11 YO's hand. Something along the lines of "here Boy, throw this out, don't litter" bullshit. I remember the "Boy" part, and I remember my heart racing at one little not-inaccurate word. A couple of the classmates told them it wasn't his, back off, etc. The punk insisted, and my friend and I both said to the professor's kid, "Take the can." Someone else took the can from the very confused kid and threw it out. We didn't run back to the parking lot, but it was a brisk walk. Our biggest worry was having the 11-YO call out "Hey Mom!" in the parking lot. To clarify, the 11 YO was biracial black/white too; the rest of the class and our professor were white. I'm almost certain the punks figured he was related to me (heck, everyone else did on field trips - down to the rafting clerk who looked at me crosseyed when I didin't know the kid's shoe size).
Coming back from the trip, I was pissed. It was such a freaking minor incident, we were in a public NATIONAL park, there were park rangers within shouting distance, we outnumbered them about 5 to 1... and I still backed down. I didn't say any of the things that came to mind, I didn't call them out, I didn't make waves.
I used to say I was afraid of the South, but that's not really true. I'm afraid of the legacy, not just Southern, that I've internalized. I'm afraid of how my reactions turn on a freaking dime, how easily my loud mouth was silenced. I fear for my family, and I fear for me.
Fear is the mind-killer, said Frank Herbert. He wasn't wrong.
I've been fortunate - so many of my race-based incidents have been on an individual level, peer-to-peer - people, usually minors, who didn't like me for a lot of reasons, but race/ethnicity was the easiest thing to attack, so they did. I've been punched, bruised, intimidated, and insulted, but I haven't been hospitalized, or fired, or jailed.
Insitutional racism (the intrinsic bias that is part of the fabric of our justicial, political, and socioceonomic system), or overt racism by those in authority, is of course always harder to prove. There are a few incidents where the personal and the institutional converge, and the one that still bugs me is the one that happened in the Deep Deep South. The thing that bugs me is that I'm not sure what I would do differently today. Most things, I can see where I (mis)handled things. This one leaves me flummoxed.
*cue Sophia voice* Picture it - Southern Georgia, 1997 (ish). A pack of environmental science students (all female) and their professor's kid (11 YO boy) are walking through exhibits at Okeefenokee Swamp. We'd done a fairly cool guided boat tour earlier in the day, passing several groups of people in canoes, off and on. The non-National Park part of the park has trails (with real unfettered basking 'Gators that you must walk around), indoor AC-ed hutches with educational info, and outdoor pens of native wildlife. The pack of us are walking down the trail, and 2 twenty-something guys are behind us. We stop at the mini-deer pen (cue girly "awwwws") and the guys behind us make mime rifle-shooting. In memory, one of them made eye-conmtact then, but I wouldn't swear under oath. We walk into an indoor exhibit - they're there. A few of us go to exit by the same door - they're still there, outside, chatting. I don't know exactly why that seemed weird to me, but I asked an older friend to get everyone together and leave by the other door.
Damned if they didn't follow.
I registered the "uniform" the Dynamic Duo were wearing: close-cropped, almost military hair, white shirt, blue jeans. One shirt had an elephant humping Congress, which also read "Take America Back the Right Way." Why did "uniform" come to mind? Because of one St. Joe's nun in my lily-white and token-brown high school, who bothered to cover hate groups in a social justice class. She'd said that some white supremacy groups go "undercover" in the most innocuous clothing possible, hence the blue jeans and white T. Does that fit a lot of people? Absolutely. Something about their attitude, their swagger, maybe, made them register as a threat.
We start walking down the trail, and they're following. Someone mentioned that they'd seen the two of them in a canoe when we were on the boat tour, and they'd tried to talk to the girls in one boat. Then one of them catches up to us, and tries to put a Coke can in the 11 YO's hand. Something along the lines of "here Boy, throw this out, don't litter" bullshit. I remember the "Boy" part, and I remember my heart racing at one little not-inaccurate word. A couple of the classmates told them it wasn't his, back off, etc. The punk insisted, and my friend and I both said to the professor's kid, "Take the can." Someone else took the can from the very confused kid and threw it out. We didn't run back to the parking lot, but it was a brisk walk. Our biggest worry was having the 11-YO call out "Hey Mom!" in the parking lot. To clarify, the 11 YO was biracial black/white too; the rest of the class and our professor were white. I'm almost certain the punks figured he was related to me (heck, everyone else did on field trips - down to the rafting clerk who looked at me crosseyed when I didin't know the kid's shoe size).
Coming back from the trip, I was pissed. It was such a freaking minor incident, we were in a public NATIONAL park, there were park rangers within shouting distance, we outnumbered them about 5 to 1... and I still backed down. I didn't say any of the things that came to mind, I didn't call them out, I didn't make waves.
I used to say I was afraid of the South, but that's not really true. I'm afraid of the legacy, not just Southern, that I've internalized. I'm afraid of how my reactions turn on a freaking dime, how easily my loud mouth was silenced. I fear for my family, and I fear for me.
Fear is the mind-killer, said Frank Herbert. He wasn't wrong.