Racism in real life
A swastika (or स्वस्तिक in Hindi, if your computer can display it). In the east, a holy symbol in various religions, with no connotations of racism. In the west, the uniting logo of racially-minded (but otherwise mostly mindless) hateful twits.
At a café last week, I was chatting with a friend when our attention shifted to an increasingly loud conversation between Sheba the Kenyan barista and a scruffy-looking guy in thermo overalls:
Sheba: Well, this is not a public toilet!
Guy: He had to piss.
Sheba: But you can’t just come in here and buy nothing and use the toilet. That’s rude. There is a public toilet right over there.
Guy: You wanna try telling him that? Go ahead, try.
Other guy, coming out of toilet: Shut up, bitch. African bitch.
Guy: That’s right, shut the fuck up.
Other guy, yelling: You just watch it! You’re black! You’re not Icelandic! You watch it!
(rough translation)
A few more obscenities and threats of that nature (I don’t recall the exact words; I was a little stunned), and then they eyed my friend and myself, and walked out with swagger.
At the very first racist utterance, my jaw dropped and I let out a wide-eyed “ha!” and stared at them as they left. What came out of me was nearly a laugh, and I found that a little disturbing, but of course it was not out of amusement but because of the sheer absurdness of what I heard.
My friend and I were the only customers in there, and they took a look at us before leaving; if Sheba had been alone they might have made more trouble. She said this kind of thing was not particularly rare, that it was fairly common for someone to come up and do something like draw a swastika on the window or shout something at her.
She shrugged and smiled and acted cool about it. But there is no way a person can be unaffected by such a forthright expression of unadulterated hate — and veiled threats.
I almost made it to thirty without ever witnessing an outright in-yo’-face racist confrontation. Maybe that was lucky; by all accounts it is not that rare, so maybe I just don’t hang out in the circles where it is common. The thought of occurrences like this has always disgusted me, but all the more now that it has become real for me. My mood was murky for a while afterwards.
Smaller, less pernicious manifestations of racist thought are all over the place, of course. I once stayed with a Portuguese family in the Algarve, and sitting outside on the patio one balmy August evening the middle-aged mother of the family mentioned in passing that in her travels in Northern Europe she had found that blond-haired people were generally bad people. Seeing the mortified look on my face, she hastened to add that I was of course the exception! Perfectly missing the point.
That kind of thinking leads to prejudice and injustice of various kinds. But at least it is not hatred; it does not lead to violence.
I am an engineer. I like to fix problems. As problems go, the existence of racial hatred (well, and any kind of baseless malice) is a particularly foul-smelling one — and one that is rather outside the domain of what I know how to tackle.
How do we fix this problem?
Update: looks like their visit was less about the personal toilet needs and more about Sheba. She just told me that what the guy left behind in the bathroom was not in the toilet. It was on the floor. Bon appetit.
November 23rd, 2005 at 2:43 am
As one who has lived with racism around her all her life, you do like any other person: turn a blind eye…
November 24th, 2005 at 5:45 am
If you will solve this problem you will change the world - to the better.
- - -
On this note, I have a sad… or a rather concerning story to share.
Yesterday my five year old daughter told me: “Dad, I don’t want to live in the sun in America because I don’t want to turn brown”.
Of course I asked her series of question to remove all doubt, and yes - my concerns were right. She thought that she would turn African-American by being in the sun.
I had no idea how to respond - should I tell her that; yes, she would turn African-American, but that is great… or should I tell her that there is no way that she will ever turn African-American… thereby potentially inducing racism.
Just to give a little inside information, there is an African-American girl in her class that is always teasing her - and for some unknown reason she “Pavlov’s” the teasing to her skin color.
My method was talking to her for 15 minutes, telling her that skin color is in no way related to behavior. I told her that the only thing that matters is if an individual is good. People of all color can be bad, and many caucasian individuals teased me in school… but that was in no way related to their skin color. I also told her that she should choose her friends based on how they behave, not the color of their skin. I even told her that I would be more than happy if her future boyfriend is African-American… the only thing that I am concerned about is if her boyfriend is good. (and yes - there is always the possibility that my daughter will choose a female partner, but I did not want to complicate the discussion).
I will continue to monitor her words and behavior, and try to find the root of her words… but perhaps we can change the world by monitoring our own behavior and influencing the people around us - one at a time.