As many of you know, I don’t post very often or, rather, hardly ever at all. But a discussion that some of us have been having about racism (and how it may effect election law) on a post that is about to fall off the front page made me want to relate a personal story or two.
I’m a white man married to a black woman. At some point after my wife and I became engaged, my father explained to me that learning about my engagement was one of the proudest moments of his life. And not because he was proud of me, mind you, but because he was proud of himself. In his mind, my engagement was proof that he had succeeded in raising a son who “doesn’t see color.”
I’ve always loved this about my father. It makes me immensely proud that I have a father who actively tried to instill that particular value in me. Not everyone I’ve known has been lucky enough to have such a father.
Now jump back a few years from the day that my father told me about his sense of pride. I was tending bar on Boylston Street in Boston and I was relating to my stepmother the story of how I had to call 911 to help break up a brawl that had erupted in the middle of an intersection as I was heading home from work. This wasn’t just a couple of kids swinging away at each other, this was something like six or eight people (men and women) dragging each other out of cars and kicking the hell out of each other. I really thought someone was going to be seriously, seriously hurt.
My stepmother was horrified by the story. And her reaction? She asked me what “color” the people were. I immediately called her out for asking such a question. Now, mind you, I wasn’t condemning her as a racist but rather trying to make her see that the question was racist. After all, how could it possibly matter what “color” the people were? She certianly never asked me what color people were when I related stories of human kindness to her.
My stepmother defended herself. She wasn’t being racist, she said, she was just trying to find out who was fighting. Were they college students? Or were they gang members? Now let me be fair to my stepmother and point out that my stepmother in no way thinks that all college students are white or that all gang members are black or hispanic. In fact my stepmother has the same values as my father who was so proud to have raised a son who “doesn’t see color.” And yet here she was using color as a shorthand for trying to figure out if these folks were drunken frat boys or scary hoodlums. Needless to say, her protestations just bothered me further and I continued to call her out. My father jumped in to defend her, offended that I was accusing his wife (who helped raise me since I was five, I mnight add) of racism and the discussion eventually wound down with neither side prevailing.
But this is where things get interesting. A couple of days later, my phone rang. It was my father. He was calling to appologize. He and my stepmother had been thinking about the discussion a lot and had come to realize that I was right to have called my stepmother out. The whole thing had bothered them so much that they had taken a good hard look inward and had to admit that they didn’t like what they saw.
Now I relate this story about my conversation with my stepmother (and father) not to make her look bad or me look good. I want to stress that my stepmother and father are in no way racist, at least not in the way that christopher would define it. But in the way that somervilletom would? Or in the way that I sometimes do when referring to myself? Well …
We all have parts of ourselves that we’re not proud of: subconsious thoughts and beliefs that are, unfortunately, part of who we are, though not who we aspire to be. When people hold up a mirror to these ideas, we recoil from them. We’re not the racists or sexists or misogynists or homophobes; it’s those other people. Look over there. Look at what they’re doing in Florida. Just get that damned mirror away from me!
And what goes for the individual goes equally for the body politic, as well. Massachusetts has more to be proud of than most states. But refusing to address, or in many cases even acknowledge, the isms still raising their ugly heads in our political system merely because they’re not as eggregious or overt as they are in some other states is, well, just wrong. And I’m calling us out on it. Myself included.
pogo says
As humans we instantly seek clues to put the unknown into context. It could be something as basic as judging a book by it’s cover. When I hear a story about someone I don’t know, my first question is always, “how old are they”. Does that make me an agist? Well, if readers judge your step mom as a racist for her question, then I’m an agist.
I don’t. I interpet both actions (or judging a book by it’s cover) as a way our fallible species tries to assess something without having all the correct information. I can’t see how making pre-judgements like this (and other pre-judgements based on a gizzilion other factors) can be avoided.
To hold this standard up as “racist” is wrong and has bad implications. It waters down meaning and proper reaction society should have against true racism. If anyone who asks what color someone else is, in order to get a (crude) snap shot of them, makes them a racist, what then do you call someone who does not give a job to a black person because of the color of their skin? Now that’s racist, yet it is the same label we use when someone ask’s a question, “what color were they”, or how old are they, or what were the wearing? Nope. The word racism must be used with care.
pogo says
This happened to me about 15 years ago. I was training several clerical level people on a new software system.
So now that you all know they were clerical level people…who here is assuming most were female? If you did would that make you a sexist? Would you presume they were more working class or that they were young because they had entry level jobs. Well you would be right on all accounts. If I told you I was in Boise, ID, would it be OK presume they were all white or would that make you a racist? Well, I was doing the training Detroit. So what do you think the racial composition of my audience was based on that? Or would it be racist to guess?
Anyway, I asked the 15 or so people if they had any questions. One woman immediately raised her hand and said loudly (she was in the back), “I’d like to axe a question?!” In a fraction of a second I looked her and assessed the situation: She was black, she was over-weight, she had “big hair”, she used poor grammar and she was waving a paper-form that the software generated in the air, repeating loudly “I’d like to axe a question”. Instantly I formed an opinion of this woman that was very bad. I expected a stupid question from this woman based on the information I had processed in this fraction of a second. No doubt I had an arrogant expression of my face, as I’d been doing this for a while and could answer most questions thrown my way.
She continued on what I believed to be an “ignorant” rant about that she thought was wrong with the form. I had to appear polite and had to listen to what she said so I could politely set her straight. So I listened as she moved from what was wrong with the form, to how she would have done it. After she stopped, I paused for a second to process everything and said to her:
“Uh” I said, “that’s a good point. You’r right. It doesn’t make sense the we did that. I’ll put that on the list of fixes we need to give you. Thank you for the great suggestion”
The made a big impression on me. Clearly I pre-judged this woman and she was a whole lot smarter than I initially gave her credit for. People will use their own value system to judge me a racist or not. I’ll use mine…which is I’m imperfect, but I’m trying everyday.
sethjp says
I certainly don’t. (Or a try not to, certainly.) My point, even as it happened, was never that my stepmom was a racist, it was that her question was coming from a racist line of thought. She was trying to determine if they were college students or hoodlums by asking after their race, for goodness sake. But people shouldn’t be judging my stepmother. Certainly not based on one story. What they should be doing, IMO, is judging themselves.
Are you an agist? I have no idea? If I had to bet on it, I’d bet you weren’t. But what does it say about you that you consider age before all else? If you never thought to explore that question, you’d probably be ignoring something pretty significant about your thought process, your beliefs, possibly your upbringing.
As for using the word racist with care. I think all words should be used with care. But I don’t think my sense of care and yours align in this particular instance.
I’m not advocating that we start labeling everybody as racist that has ever prejudged someone based on the color of their skin or told an off color joke or crossed the street because a group of young black kids (or white kids) made them nervous, but I do think things lie on a continuum. And I don’t think it makes sense to draw some arbitrary line and say, “On this side of the line, you’re a racist/sexist/chauvinist/homophobe/etc. But on this side of the line, no worries; you’re fine.”
Christopher says
Racist is a label that sticks harder. Your stepmother’s question came from some presumptions which may be cringeworthy, but that doesn’t make her “a racist”. However, context is a factor. If the offenders had left before the police showed up and the cop who responded asked what color they were, then it becomes a basic factor of physical description which may be helpful in apprehending them. I do appreciate your efforts to flush this out.
margot says
in saying that the question was racist, not his stepmom. I think the point is to call out the racist/sexist/ageist/heterosexist behaviors, giving the person (that’s all of us, really) the opportunity to examine, recognize, and move away from those behaviors.
sethjp says
Thank you, margot.
Christopher says
…of where I would say the question was “prejudicial” rather than using what I think of as the more extreme word “racist”.
David says
but I don’t see how that question can be accurately described as “prejudicial.” Perhaps you meant “prejudiced.”
fenway49 says
There’s no shortage of “scary hoodlums” who happen to be white.
David says
the jury is literally out on one of them right now.
petr says
… and this bothers me:
I’ve never liked that term. I’ve never liked the term “color blind.’ I hear that term and I don’t think “fair and equal.’ I hear that term and I hear “let us whites be magnanimous and choose to overlook the problem of your color.’ It’s a frame of reference that pivots on whiteness as the only norm, is wholly superior, deeply paternalistic and morally quite suspect.
The phrase ought to be, ‘doesn’t see color as a problem.” Works for me.
I would have asked much the same question. And I’d be far more likely to instantly imagine black people defending themselves from racist white people than I would be to think that scary black hooligans were out ‘wilding’. Growing up, most of the violence I saw between black and white was started by whites. Other than on the TV, I’ve not been witness to the violence of black people on black people. I’m sure it happens. But I’ve never met a black person whose gone out of their way to make trouble for a white person. I can’t say that for some whites I’ve met. So, yeah, if you tell me people are fighting on the street, kicking the shit out of each other and dragging people from cars, I’d ask what color they were. If you called me up and told me you saw strange fruit hanging from the sycamore trees, I’d ask you what color… That doesn’t make me a racist. In fact, turning it on me gives a pass to the actual racists, diluting responsibility for the problem to some vague ‘everyone’.
You see, many racist whites have long operated from a position of impunity. They can start trouble and not pay the price. Indeed, for many years in this country, longer for so than against it, that was the legal position of the majority. Black people are not the problem. White people are the problem. That we turn it around so often and make black people the problem is, strangely enough, a huge part of the problem. And that phrase ‘color blind’ encapsulates that dynamic: it says forthrightly not only that color plays no part in any given decision, but that it cannot be allowed to play a part because it is such a problem. But it’s the white people who have a problem with black people who are holding those same people at arms length trying to define and defend the terms upon which they’ll interact. This context is the one in which non-racists whites also exist: they can’t imagine being willfully ugly to someone, but they don’t understand the sheer monstrosity of life in America for non-whites. That’s how they can treat the phrase ‘color blind’ as some epitome of fairness. They actually think they are being fair, all the while, if not actively oppressing, they are passively failing to advance. That’s why progress is so fucking slow.
So. I’m not ‘color blind. I see color. Black is beautiful. White is beautiful. People are beautiful… Except when they are willfully ugly. People can be beautiful just by being. But people have to act ugly.
Christopher says
There are times that I’ve tried unsuccessfully to remember the skin color of someone I’ve encountered previously. Personally the fact that someone’s skin color is a few shades darker than mine is of no consequence which probably explains said memory failure. I certainly don’t see the “problem” of someone else’s color the way you suggest the statement be changed in your first paragraph either because color by definition is not a problem, unless made so by a prejudiced or racist beholder. People’s skins come in a variety of shades on the spectrum and I agree it’s all beautiful, but eyes and hair come in multiple colors too and we don’t wring our hands over that. I don’t believe that the solution to racism is to maintain color-consciousness, but for a presumably positive end, but to eliminate color-consciousness entirely.
petr says
If color is not a problem, then blindness is not necessary. It is as simple as that. If color is not a problem, there is NO need to deny it exists. Why look away, or forsake sight altogether? Why, indeed, is it more important to forsake sight than it is to acknowledge color? For which other things, in your life, would you forsake eye sight?
Willful blindness is not acceptance.
Willful blindness is refusal. It is refusal and denial as arch and as profound as the dumbest and meanest cracker ideology out there. At best it is a grudging, forced, tolerance (which isn’t tolerance at all) and at worst it is a deceptive prelude to a sucker punch.
Christopher, this is quite a racist statement. I know you don’t mean it as such, but it is. Or, put another way, only white people get to say the solution is to “eliminate color consciousness entirely”… as though white weren’t a color and therefore whites are speaking from some moral high ground above race and creed. Only the creed in power gets to wield that kind of arrogance. And that’s just the point of view you can see… consider the other side: the black Americans who’ve spent so much under the thumb of racist oppression, entirely aswim in a ‘color-consciousness’ completely not of their own devising, suddenly spun around and told that none of that matters. Kinda like the drunk uncle who steals your car, blames you for the accident he got into and then turns around and says “i don’t wanna talk about it.” Now if you consider the situation with the drunk uncle absurd (and it is) why won’t you consider the absurdity of a white man saying the solution to racism is not to see color?
There is a difference and a distinction to be made between ‘seeing color’ and ‘seeing what the racist sees’: your willful lack of insight, however, elides the distinction until they run together and you think they are the same. And, so, you would forsake sight altogether rather than put in the effort to make the distinction.
Christopher says
…is to take very literally MLK’s dream of judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character and to speed up the coming of the day when we all do that. If it takes not seeing color to accomplish that then so be it. Otherwise we continue to use it as a distinction and give some with bad motives excuses to be racist. I am not the drunk uncle in this scenario and all I can control is my own attitude. The Golden Rule is my standard for interactions with everyone. If everyone thought like me as I suspect they generally do if we were were talking about the color of hair or eyes rather than skin there would not be any problems. Please don’t confuse this with not appreciating cultural diversity as I very much celebrate that aspect.
sue-kennedy says
What petr said -differences are a beautiful thing.
We all prejudge all day long. We would be unable to make decisions if we had to get to know every person, situation, purchase through complex research and trials, nothing would get done. Using the Golden Rule goes along way to ensure we treat others fairly.
Although I am perfect, I recognize that racism exists. Although the step mother asked the question for a different reason, would it have been acceptable to ask in order to understand if this was a racial fight?
Take the recent Zimmerman shooting. Isn’t race a big part of how different people see the events? Some people hear a black teen walking through the neighborhood and completely understand Zimmerman following him. Others hear a black teen being shot by a white man and are suspicious. If you inter-changed the race, gender, age, religon or sexual preference of these 2 players, doesn’t it change the story?
Lets change the gender, age, religon or sexual preference the fight sethjp describes. Is it different if young men are fighting a group of gay men? Men fighting a group of elderly women? Muslims being dragged out of their cars?
Sethjp felt age and gender were relevant to the description. Are they? Are some fights based on racism or do we pretend that it never happens? Or to quote Freud, sometimes a fight is just a fight.