How did you learn about bigotry...?

[bliss_eternal]

I've been inspired by MarianJack's post to ask this. When did you learn about bigotry/racism? Was it an experience? Did your parents teach you about it?

Please share!

:hi:
bliss

[judaspriestess]

1. thats easy, growing up in Texas

I love my home and I am proud to be a Texan but we all know what retards that state can breed or raise. I was actually quite oblivious to it because I grew up predominantly with the Hispanic community but I really noticed it (or it really bothered me) when I was working as a cocktail waitress in a country bar back in San Antonio. It was a very nice club and everyone went there. Anyway this "cowboy" says to me "get me another beer Juanita". OH MY GOD, I was so damn pissed when he said that to me and of course I did not get a tip and I found his spit in the ashtray. Disgusting..........

[bliss_eternal]

3. judaspriestess--

That's disgusting! I'm so sorry you went through that. :hug: I know from experience, it's a shitty feeling to have someone react to the way you look.

If it's any consolation, when I was working in Chicago, this bigot got pissed at me and through his plate and silverware across the table at me. The other servers ran in the back to get the manager. When the mgr. spoke with him about it, the guy was apparently upset because I spoke intelligently. :rofl: He told my mgr. "...how dare she speak as if she were intelligent!?"

My mgr. :"...Sir she's very intelligent."

Bigot: "DON'T you tell me...she can't be intelligent! I'm a professor of LAW at Loyola. I KNOW intelligence and THAT...she CAN NOT be intelligent!!"

My manager asked him to pay his bill and to leave... He happened to be interracially married and knew the drill, and didn't want to hear his racist shit(thankfully). I guess he would have liked it better if I had tap danced to the table and utilized ebonics or something. :eyes:

[judaspriestess]

5. Thats just stupid bliss

A professor? How despicable of someone in that position saying those things to you. I am sorry too.

tap danced??? hahahaha

[bliss_eternal]

6. Hehehe...

Did that make you laugh? ;) I kinda' giggled while typing it out. Haha!

You know how they love it when we endorse their stereotypical ideas of us. :eyes:

He probably would have been far more comfortable if I spoke like Celie from Color Purple, wore plaits in my hair, a bandana on my head and didn't look him in his eyes. Had I served him quietly, grateful for the opportunity to serve him in all his white, superior glory. :eyes::puke:

This is part of the reason I think that I fight so hard against blanket statements and stereotypes, even in casual conversation here on DU. The damage from such ideas is so far reaching. People with such ideas probably won't change anytime soon--it's hard not to get angry about it, but as Salma Hayek said, "...how can you react to such ignorance?" Or something to that affect--in her O magazine interview. :hi:

[MarianJack]

2. Thanks, bliss!

Unfortunately, when I was growing up, racist words were the norm, not the exception.

For me, education came from what was then an honest news media. They put the fire hoses and dogs right into our living rooms. Then Martin Luther King made a speech that still gives me a shiver in my spine today.

Today my only regret about living in Maine is that i REALLY miss being around African American People. Of course, I live with my favorite Afriican American. My wonderful son!

[bliss_eternal]

4. I hear 'ya...

I was a child when Roots was televised,and wasn't at all aware what the big deal was. I wasn't even allowed to watch it. :shrug: Of course now, I get it. Then, didn't have a clue. Living in a minority area, one doesn't experience many times of people using slurs and such.

In my elementary school, all the kids were asian or black. We all got along well. It cracks my husband up that sometimes I crave sushi or sashimi. These were items I was offered in trade for my twinkies and cupcakes. :)

Growing up in California one experiences a very different kind of racism. Things are more subtle here. Some things weren't said but understood. It took me moving to a place like the midwest briefly to understand that. I kind of appreciated the overt bigotry I experienced in Chicago, because you know what you are dealing with. Here, people will smile at you while they are silently despising you.

As a kid, I recall adults joking about going into Orange County to visit Disneyland. They would say,"...they let us (minorities) in (to Orange County) to visit Disneyland, but when the park closes we NEED to LEAVE immediately." As an adult, I can look back on that and the population of Orange County then(predominately Anglo, middle class, upper middle class to wealthy)and understand what was being said by that statement. There was also some truth to it as well. I don't recall us ever frequenting restaurants near the park (Disney)--we did everything in the park and then went home. We usually got gas in our neighborhood prior to the trip.

It's funny how things change. My husband and I spend a lot of time in that area now. We see more and more couples that look like us. Sometimes we encounter little pockets in Orange County that are like something out of Deliverance--but for the most part things have changed a lot. It still pulls the majority of the conservative vote for California, but it is getting more diverse and liberal--slowly. :hi:

[Brewman_Jax]

7. Where do I begin...?

growing up in the Atlanta metro area, Atlanta bills itself as the city too busy to hate. That doesn't quite apply to the areas outside the metro area. This was when the metro area was 5 counties, it's now 10. The outer 3 counties didn't vote in the rapid transit system when it was chartered in 1965 because they didn't want "those people" to be able to get to their suburban communities. (There's a great comic routine about that, but it's too long to write. :D) We had sundown counties, the most notorious being Forsyth Co. which had protest marches in the late '80's (that's no typo.) I have room for more, but I figure one at a time. :hi:

[Brewman_Jax]

8. Another example

my childhood neighborhood was hit by white flight. Of all of the white kids who graduated elementary school and started high school with me (we had no middle/junior high schools then), NONE graduated high school with me.

[bliss_eternal]

9. White flight...

not much of that where I grew up--it was a predominately minority community. There was a bit of "asian flight" but no one talks about minorities relocating to other communities, do they? LOL!

White flight absolutely cracks me up. They think they are getting away from "bad influences." But let's talk sometime about what has been discovered in the suburban communities--teenage and housewife prostitution, drug dealing, gangs, meth labs, porn businesses, etc.

So someone tell me again, what exactly is it the whites are flying from...? ;)

[Brewman_Jax]

10. Those durn brown people

who drive down property values and talk funny and beat up their kids and party to all hours of the night and don't go to work, and... :silly:

[Samurai_Writer]

11. When I was 6 years old, i was called the "N" word...

I lived in an all-white neighborhood, and went to an all-white Catholic school. My parents were German/Irish, as far as I knew. I was the only one who didn't 'look white' -- my skin is olive-complected, and I get really dark in the summer if I stay outside a lot. Which I did as a kid.

The kids down the street told me I must be adopted, because I was a 'n'. I went crying home to my dad, who unknown to me at the time, used to use that word, before he dated my mom. My mom heard him use it once, and told him if he ever used it again, they wouldn't be together. This was in the 1950s, and I was born in 1960. So imagine my dad hearing his own daughter being called the word he used to use (he grew up in a racist home).

My dad was great about it, though. He told me, that those kids were nothing but 'rednecks'... which was kind of confusing at the time... their necks didn't look red. But when I was 14 and started dating, my first boyfriend was black, and my dad was completely cool with it.

When I did our family history 5 years ago, I found out that we have Israeli, north African, and Cherokee blood, along with Irish, German, and Welsh. I look exactly like my dad's mother, who was 'dark German' -- meaning, part North African. I have a photo of her family from 1905 or so, and there is definitely some mixed blood in that side of the family.

[bliss_eternal]

12. It's a horrible word...

I have very mixed feelings about it being used more frequently--like in the context of hip hop music, etc. Part of me feels it has lost it's ability to hurt, yet another part of me feels it has an ugly history and it is still used in a derogatory sense by some that inhabit our world, so... :shrug: Again, really mixed bag for me.

I'm very sorry that you were called that and ever had such an experience. I'm glad that it allowed your dad to maybe think of the fact that he used to use it--and frame it appropriately for you.

It's funny to me how poorly those with "olive skin" can be treated in various communities. In my urban community, I didn't look like the other kids with darker skin, so I was teased and called names too. I was frequently asked what I was and told I couldn't be the same ethnicity as everyone else because I didn't look like them.:eyes: What's worse, in their opinion, I didn't "sound" like them, either so that didn't help my cause much. LOL! I didn't hear that I was adopted, but I did hear that I had to be "mixed" with something.

Thanks so much for sharing RadFemFl!! Good to see you posting here--Welcome! :hi: