"If you have a racist friend
Now is the time
Now is the time for your friendship to end"
The Specials
I recently discovered that I have a racist friend. This racist friend, as a result of over tanning, has browner, darker skin than a large percentage of the African-American population. She is also 100% of Middle Eastern descent. She doesn't even realize that Arab peoples have become the new blacks. The new minority population that routainly have their rights suspended, are frequently misrepresentated in the media, and discriminated against in society. When I have heard others discuss how racist Americans still are, I sometimes try to defend this by saying that people can be racist in theory, but rarely in practice. That if a black man was being beaten by a group of white guys, most people would step in to stop the assault. From kindergarten we learn about the civil rights movement, slavery, suffragists, the Holocaust, the way Catholics were driven out of towns across America. Shouldn't there be something, after years of hearing the voices of victims of race/religious/gender based discrimination, deep down in our psyche holding us back from actually acting on that thinking?
I discovered that not only was my friend racist, but that she was willing to put her medieval beliefs into practice. When I asked her who she was voting for, she replied that she wasn't going to vote for Obama, "well because, sorry, I won't vote for a black man." I was shocked and pretty horrified by her....not just because of the gross statement...but because she said it within earshot of her friend, a black bartender who was waiting on us. Here it was, the ludicrous of all ludicrous moments, a brown person saying she wouldn't vote for another brown person, simply because he is a different shade of brown than herself. The Harvard education, the Senate record, years spent as a community organizer, law professor, his white heritage? No, Obama is a different shade of brown, it all comes down to that one cosmetic factor that he cannot control.
In the spirit of Everyday Indignities, which is also about crafting better responses and actions to affronts in our personal lives, I told my friend to fuck off.
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2 comments:
i wonder what your friend would have done if you would have told her brown bartender friend what she had said..if she would have denied it or stood by her words??!! you should have tested her..that would have been interesting..and quite amusing!!
well, that makes me ill. why, oh why, does america constantly insist on entertainment first? do we ever think, oh i won't hire an hispanic attorney or send my child to a japanese doctor? do we ask our plumbers or investment advisors if they had an affair or smoked pot in college? why oh why can't we get our heads out of our asses long enough to decipher who has the best plan for our beloved US of A?
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