Good Old Fashioned Family Racism

Courtesy of the UN Alliance of Civilizations

Racism (making a generalization, often a negative one, about a single person or group of people based on the color of their skin) is a present-day Greek monster.  It's like some kind of mysterious beast living in a rock crevice or the center of a whirlpool, snapping up human beings as they pass.  A many-headed beast who grows two more snapping, toothy skulls for every one an intrepid hero lops off.

My father is racist.  I've long since come to terms with it, even if I abhor his opinions.  His father was a firefighter on the Southside of Chicago during the 1960s.  For any of you who are familiar with Chicago's Southside in the 1960s, you understand why my father has some less than stellar opinions about African Americans.  The Civil Rights movement (as does all social unrest, ie the current london riots) bred a number of incidents of opportunistic violence.  Firefighters and police officers were on the front lines of these battles and suffered the consequences.  I understand why my father, growing up in a time when his father's life was more in danger than usual, would seek out a scapegoat.

Now, please understand me: I DO NOT APPROVE OF RACISM.  What I'm saying is one makes allowances for the people they love, despite their flaws, and I fully intend to raise my children to acknowledge their grandfather's opinions are wrong but to love him all the same.

As for me; I grew up in a rough sort of neighborhood where calling someone "white" was one of the most potent insults people could toss at one another.  Caucasians were a minority and bore the brunt of societal racism. There were certain bathrooms we couldn't use under threat of violence, certain areas of the school bus we had to avoid. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. There were boys who wouldn't date me because of my color, people who suggested I dye my blonde hair brown to better pass for an exotic kind of white, like Sicilian or Portuguese.

I remember the pain, the tears. I remember the absolute idiocracy of judging someone based on the level of melanin in their skin cells. Some people chose hate under those circumstances ("If they don't like me, I don't like them."); I chose empathy. I don't ever want to make someone feel the way I felt.

This is the point where my personal judgements come through.  I cannot justify racism among my generation and the other children of the Baby Boomers.  I think of us as more educated, more tolerant and more exposed to other cultures than our parents and grandparents.

Frankly, I think we should know better.

My Husband's brother Dorian (age 29) is a racist; specifically about African-Americans and Hispanics.  He regularly make comments about hygeine, lifestyle and language with these two peoples as his favorite target.  Granted, he enjoys attention and a good portion of this may be to get a rise out of others.  Most of it, I think, is genuine and springs from an insecurity and defensiveness his mother seemed to impart through her breast milk.  My mother-in-law has the same feelings about African-Americans and Hispanics (and the French, for some reason.  She hates the French).

I've taken to ignoring his remarks.  This is not the best avenue, I'm sure, but it's the best for my sanity.  Dorian is exceptionally antagonistic and illogical; arguing with him about this will just result in his anger and hostility.  In past disagreements he's called me "a princess" and "arrogantly superior" when our philosophies don't match.  The only way I can deal is to pretend I didn't hear anything.  I don't respond, I don't laugh nervously, I don't sniff at his intolerance.  I just disregard his words.

I can't end this post without a short point on Muslims.  Ever since September 11, 2001, people of Middle Eastern descent (whether they practice Islam or not) have the dubious "honor" of being the new prejudicial punching bags; especially in military communities (you may remember a past post where I published a short story about the subject).

CALLING ALL MUSLIMS TERRORISTS IS EQUIVALENT TO CALL ALL CHRISTIANS MEMBERS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN.  Think about that the next time you send out one of those disgusting chain emails about "towel-heads."

Racism is the easy way out.  Educate yourselves, dammit.  Take responsibility for your own lives and stop blaming others for society's ills.  If God wanted us all identical, He would have made it so.

My Empathy

"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.  To live is to be slowly born." French aviator and author Antoine de Saint Exupéry

I was in seventh grade in March of 1998 when Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden shot 15 people at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro, Arkansas.  Four students and a teacher died.  

I was just about to enter high school in the spring of 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and one teacher and shot another 21 people at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado. 

I was a senior in college when Seng-Hui Cho systematically murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. 

I was married to a deployed soldier and spending a lot of time on an Army Base in November 2009 when Nidal Hassan shot and killed 13 people and wounded 29 others at Fort Hood in Texas. 

And now this.

Even though I've never been to Norway and I'm not a teenager at summer camp, I can't help but feel, the way I've felt for these other victims, for the people of a country whose peace has been shattered in such a senseless and cruel manner.  It's the kind of terrifying event that brings all those other memories that have been hovering, blurry, on the edges of my mind back in sharp focus.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this.  I guess I’m in a dark and twisty mood.  I suppose I just want to impress upon the world how much my generation has violence embedded into our collective memories.  I grew up this way…with metal detectors and early-warning systems and shooting spree safety protocol.  Like the old adage “duck and cover” from the Cold War but somehow much more sinister, we spent afternoons in high school practicing covering the window in the classroom door and locking it, shutting off the lights and building a sturdy barricade of chairs and desks to shield us from bullets.   

Do our parents understand what that’s like?  Going to school every day knowing it’s possible someone among your peers wants you to bleed to death on chipped tile? 

Is it dramatic for me to say I felt the pain of these children, these young men and women, from hundreds or even thousands of miles away?  I did.  I wept and I forgot to eat and I couldn’t sleep for the nightmares of running feet and endless hallways and screaming pleas that haunted me.  It hurt so badly.  The anguish of strangers who lived just like I did broke something inside me...each and every time. 

This kind of human connection is a powerful and bewildering thing.  Is it an evolutionary trait designed to promote survival of the species?  Is it a gift from a Higher Power to ease the pain of loneliness in an ever-expanding universe?  Is it the result of individual brain chemistry and should be considered merely a personality quirk?  Is it all of those things or something we have yet to define? 

I have no answers.