Racism Still Exists; How Far Have We Really Come?

In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, racism has been targeted as the culprit behind slow relief efforts by the U.S. government. But how far off from the truth is that opinion? Is racism alive and well in American or has the U.S. come a long way?

In this editorial, a mother explains a situation where she and her family experienced racism in their everday lives, changing her outlook on exactly how far we've come as a nation. Read on to hear her story:

I have always been an open-minded person, never seeing color or judging another based on their race, creed, religion or sexual preference. I guess I have been living in a dream straight out of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, as I truly believed that we as a nation have grown so much and learned to accept one another.

I am a proud mother of three beautiful healthly boys; two of whom are of African American heritage partially. I myself am an Italian American woman. When I became pregnant with my middle son, Cullen, many family and friends disproved, as I was having a baby by a "black man" and that the child would always be treated differently as a bi-racial human being.

I was urged to have an abortion from so many people that were close to me, but I could not even think of destroying this life inside of me. I told everyone that the world had become more tolerant of bi-racial children and that they were wrong that my growing fetus would be treated no differently then anyone else.

I have so much guilt for thinking out of my rose-colored glasses of love and acceptance. The world has not changed; people are just more low key about their intolerance. My son did not ask to be born and no matter what he is a human being. He is here now and I love him to deat,h so as a result, I will fight tooth and nail to defend his honor when it comes to racism.

My world was sent into a whirlwind on August 20, 2005 when I brought my 7 year-old Cullen Deshawn to my employer's (Amica Insurance) "Bring Your Child to Work Day," a time when parents could bring their children to their job and the child could see first hand what it is that Mommy or Daddy did every day.

One of my co-workers greeted my son that morning by saying, "Let me get down on his level. Yo nigger, what's up." I was shocked, hurt, angry and hoped that this comment flew by him because as a 7 year old, he is often in his own world. He did hear her, as it was impossible for him not to -- she was a few inches away from us and she directed this right towards him and I.

I am a professional and have been molded by my employer to not make waves -- do not act inappropriate and allow management to do their job. I wanted to confront this employee, but I did not trust myself because I was so angry. I also did not want to make matters worse for my son if the employee and I got into a verbal argument over this, so I decided to play cool, be the professional and deal with management shortly.

When I got home that night, I was so angry analyzing this sentence. What is "his level?" What makes her think she can refer to my son as "nigger?" Does she think we use this word at home? She must think I address him as "nigger" around the house, but why would she think that?

I sat down with Cullen that night and I had to have a heart breaking mother/son talk. I answered some of his questions like "Why did she call me a nigger, nigger means an ignorant person and I am not that?" I had to look my baby in his eyes and tell him that this would not be the last time that he would be called "nigger" in his life. And that he would be called "nigger" many more times. I also had to tell him that I could protect him from so many other factors in life, but I could not effectively protect him from this one word.

Lying in bed that night, I cried and thought to myself, "How far have we really come as a nation?" I was so naive to think the world was so different and accepting. I dusted my shoulder's off the next morning and began my pursuit of justice through the chain of command at Amica. My driving force was that this was the first time in Cullen's life that he was called a "nigger" and I was going to tackle the issue head on, so when he was older and someone called him a "nigger," he could think of this first instance and how his mother defended his honor.

Boy was I a fool, HR (Human Resources) did not want an outspoken mother and advocate bringing up this issue. To them it was a disruption to their corporate environment. My goal was to get an apology from the employee and Amica. And to date, I have neither. I do however have two disciplinary actions against me: one for asking questions relating to their investigation into this statement (which Amica states were neither proved nor disproved) and one for a petition my boyfriend posted online www.petitionspot.com/petitions/Cullen that asks for the average human being to show support to Cullen, a right any parent has.

I have worked for this company for 4 years and I have never been formally disciplined, but I guess this issue was too political or unimportant in their eyes.

I am glad I had this opportunity to see that racism is alive and well in America. It is not just one group that is targeted, hate is alive and well. And if you are different, then you will be targeted. I can now effectively prepare my son for the cold world outside, instead of sheltering him in a land of love and acceptance.

My son is Martin Luther King Jr's dream. He is the "best of both worlds" and I will teach him to be strong and proud no matter what the world is like on the outside!

 

Dear God! Don't let my mother read that letter!

She's dead set against the possibility of me ever having bi-racial children. She claims that she's not racist but she's worried that that they will suffer too much.

Anyhow... my mother's got her knickers in a knot about it even though I am not currently involved in a relationship. She's worried because I mainly date BM.

I keep trying to tell her that times have changed and that our society is much more tolerant than in her day. I know plenty of people who have bi-racial children and they have never had any problems or been victims of racism... at least not yet. What happened to this woman and her child is completely unacceptable and in fact very sad... I like to think that times have changed, but when I hear about events like this one... I don't know what to think.

 

I don't think that times have changed a whole lot, and this very letter is proof of that...

and, incidents like this are why I started that thread about the change in society's views TODAY on interracial relationships. I knew something deeper was behind it, other than people dating interracially.

 

in my experience i have never witnessed any racial attacks on my boyfriend, or my friends who are black or mixed race. so from my point of view it is better than it was. i don't know what is said behind their backs, but we can't control peoples thoughts, they can think what they like - its called freedom.

i think we also have to remember the equality between races only happened what, 50 years ago? so it will take a while as people are still alive who experienced it.

but it is better than it was, and it will get better.....................now does anyone want my rose-tinted glasses!

 

Yes, everyone's experiences are different, so, there is some change, even if it's minimal right now.

 

I'd be honest with you, black folks have it easy in the UK. Believe that.

 

I think there's progress, certainly here in the UK. Although some changes are small and a bit false, at least there is progress. For example, my parent's generation could get away with using words like "nigger" and other derogatory terms. Nowadays that same generation know they can't. OK, so they may still harbor ill feelings towards black people, but at least they realise that verbalising it isn't socially acceptable, where as before they thought it was perfectly OK.

I went to my 1st football match when I was 10 and I remember hearing the chant "You black bastard" aimed at the black players. Nowadays such a chant is almost unheard of in the UK. There will always be some dick, but they are at least a minority and the people around him/her won't join in or turn a blind eye, they're likely to say something. And at some grounds (including my team, Chelsea) they have microphones to pick up racism and will evict anyone guilty of it.

 

True dat. Racism in the UK is no longer seen as socially acceptable, even if some small groups of individuals will err from this, and people still aren't QUITE sure what racism constitutes. Certainly, you'd be unlikely to see a work place incident like this take place without repercussions - in public life and the public arena, racism is certainly not tolerated. And in addition, law has come into line to clamp down very harshly on racially motivated crime, which has helped in some small way, I think. Things aren't perfect and society is still imbalanced with some funny ideas, but in certain parts, the diversity is plain to see, and I like that.

 

Absolutely....Racism is alive and well in the U.S.ofA. This country was built on racism, so a building's foundation is usually what keeps it going. Thus, as long as there's a U.S.A., racism will continue to be a cornerstone in it's foundation.

 

I just voted no to your question, but not because I don't think racism is alive and well. I voted that way because of the wording of your question. Your question is, "Does racism still exist as much as the old times?" The racism of today isn't as blatant as the old times because people don't get lynched as much, IR relationships and sex are tolerated (even though they are hated by many), and white American men are more afraid of black men than they used to be. The youth of today strike back when they are struck. Nowadays, racism is kept inside until it boils over every now and then. During the times that it does boil over, you can see it still exists.

Peace.
_________
....because I don't discriminate when I'm laying down the wood.

 

Mo!!! ha ha ha that was sick man!! Yes it still exists but has taken on another form!

 

One of the most pervasive stock characters of American miscegenation lore is the Other Man, the man of color who supposedly preys lustfully on white women. The most famous Other Man, of course, was the black male in the Old South. Countless black men there were lynched for "looking" at white women the wrong way. Given the widely held notion that blacks had "such insatiable sexual appetites that they had to go beyond the boundaries of their race to get satisfaction, there was no doubt in white society's mind as to what intentions lay behind those looks. Filipino immigrants to the United States were similarly demonized in the 1920s and '30s for seducing presumably innocent white women. As a result of white male discomfort over these unions, several American states added Filipinos to the list of ethnic groups prohibited from marrying whites.
But the Other Man concept wasn't limited to the United States or even to non-whites. Jewish men in Nazi Germany, for example, were often portrayed as lusting predatorily after Aryan women. In Mein Kampf, Hitler thundered about the "black-haired Jewish youth who lurks in wait [for the German girl]" (then again, Hitler's rant about Jews' purported sexual prowess may have been spurred by envy, as the Fuhrer himself was impotent). Even in Canada, a country that prides itself on being non-racist, anti-Semitic remarks like Hitler's were not unheard of. One 1910 Canadian account from Quebec described Jewish immigrant men as "corrupters of our women" (i.e. of white Christian women). As well, Canada at one time had a law that forbade white women from working in stores owned by Chinese men.

The Other Man couldn't have come into being, though, without a flipside stereotype: the lily-pure white female. According to this philosophy, white women were innately asexual. They saved any sexual feelings they did have for the white men they married and whose children they bore as part of their duty to reproduce Fortress Caucasia. The average white woman would be expected to shun sexual contact with men of any "race" but white (and even with white men other than her lawfully wedded husband), and so couplings between white females and minority males were in general assumed to be rape.

But such a woman trod a fine Madonna (Madonna in the sense of the Virgin Mary, not the modern-day songstress)/Whore line. If she were sexually assaulted by a non-white man or, in the case of consensual intercourse, presumed to have been "of previously chaste character" and thus seduced, society would pity her as an innocent victim. On the other hand, women who refused to play the innocent victim or deny their involvement with minority men fell off their pedestal as fast as you could say "slut." These women indeed descended to the level of the Slut, where, being considered beyond moral repair, they usually remained.

Lynchings, the castration of minority men involved with white women, and the demonization of entire ethnic groups as sexually deviant -- it's tempting to think of these things as relics of a distant past. Nonetheless, incidents such as the 1989 murder of a young black man accused of dating a white girl in Bensonhurst, New York remind us that perhaps we haven't evolved as far as we'd like to think. Like the Slut, the Other Man has faded but not gone the way of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

 

now blacks are racist against other blacks and other minorities

white liberals attack blacks

white conservatives attack other white conservatives

and other minorites attack blacks and whites

 

Once again, Cris is on the money. So is tucker.

I'm gonna have to bookmark and re-read this one too, Cris. Sign me up for your newsletter! :lol:

 

Bullshit. It depends on where you're coming from - in many parts of Africa, mixed race children are looked upon very favorably and seen to have the best of both worlds.

If people see you as different they'll have it in for you if that's how they're inclined, it doesn't matter if you're black, one quarter black or half black - if they're that type they'll have a pop.

 

who doesnt acknowledge this? Most of the IR couples I knwo have children and they teach their children about the realities of racism in the world, how to deal with ignorant people and to have a strong sense of self.

the biracial kids I know are very healthy emotionallyl, socially, and dont have the same problems that I see so many black young males and females having.

 

Re: bi-racial children

(((First and foremost, these are personal experiences and observations. Please don't be offended.))

Well, I would have to say that has some truth to it. I know many teens and children will call a child "oreo" when they're mixed, or if they're vulgar about it "mutt" will be used. From personal experience I've seen my cousin 1/2 white, 1/2 black seems to almost completely avoid any kind of relationship or friendship w/ black people. I dunno why that is, but it happens. I don't think she feels any self-hatred, but because she looks more "white" per say, I think she feels more pressure to not be recognized as a partially "black" person.

I think to make the situation even more so the way it is, her mother (white) divorced her real father (black) to marry another black man, so maybe she feels subconciously like she can't fully trust black men, I dunno??

Her sister on the other hand, seems to face an somewhat "identity crisis" because she's bisexual, mainly gay and also has no relationships or friendships with black people whatsoever. She also takes on the more "white" skin-tone, but it's clear to see she's obviously got some black in her.

I've noticed a couple of biracial children that seem like they will try to avoid friendships and relationships with other blacks. On the other hand, I've seen biracial children do the EXACT opposite and have tons of black friends.

But with the negative racial pressures of society, the children tend to be torn between what kind of people they should surround themselves with. I'd say 1/2 black, 1/2 white children have the greatest chance of suffering this problem.

Overall, it depends on how the children were brought up by the parents. [/i]

 

Given the veins of vices such as Racism, desire, hatred, ignorance, conceit, pride, and such....How can there be "love" if we can never evolve beyond the pretentious bull shit and superficial stereotypes!? Obviously, certain action will make a desirable outcome more likely. Hell...we frequently reason about how to achieve the desired effect(if we choose to exercise Free Will); reason alone dictates these causal connections between what we desire and how we behave.

Though, I am one who will never claim to be an expert on love, because formulating causation of such is perplexing in itself. It is like the concept of/on "strength" - it seems objective enough to judge its value, but in reality, it is actually quite vague.

With these vague concepts and people full of complexes.....how does one differentiate the bull shitters - those who have a particular fancy, from those who have an genuine interest!? As an Logician, I would say: all these factors in our lives subsist, and one can easily conclude he just does not give a fuck! But this mentality is questionable - it supersedes ignorance and impedes rationality at an alarming rate. These "naysayers" fail to understand the interplay of these factors which are by nature contingent and transient.

Today I had what I would consider an intelligent women use ad misericordian fallacy - which is a Latin phrase meaning: appeal or to sympathise compassionately. Suffice it to say, I was taken aback that she would insult my intelligence with such rubbish. I considered the factors, then wondered if she would have pulled the same stunt if I was white. She gave me this pity speech about the "veins of misogyny" when she herself is quite the hypocrite. Many of these "feminist" types use ad misericordian fallacy and are able to masquerade as good reasoning - precisely because in most cases; considerations of human suffering are the issue at hand. I have already lost the kind of respect that they grave for such women. They make passing sexual innuendos and expect to be taken seriously.

Given all the extremes who are "into black skin" - they do not know the first thing about suffering. It is important to understand how things change over time and thus how they have come to exist and how their change may be adapted in the future. I suddenly got into a vice of rage that she would not even consider her actions as oppressive. I am a big mouth fucker, but I just sat there in anger. Perhaps, I am the minority, but is is inconceivable to think that is an impossible to promote virtue and prevent vice!?

 

No, it is not impossible to promote virtue and prevent vice, however, to promote virtue one must sincerely believe in its power. Perhaps so much vice in our everyday lives is due to its simplicity of attaining. Virtue is difficult, boring and certainly does not provide us with the instant gratification that we crave. It requires constant attention to and evaluation of one’s actions. Its no wonder virtue is passe.

I’m curious to know which formulations of virtue you ascribe. I think we talked about this once before but don’t recall where, but given your penchant for Classical Greek philosophy I would venture to say that leads you down the path of the Cardinal Virtues of prudence, temperance, courage and justice or even the Contrary Virtues. Correct or way off?

BTW (food for thought):

Some people are like big children, harming others without even seeing it. Staying angry with these fools is like being mad at fire because it burns.

Bodhicharyavatara

Loose the anger.

 

One could say these vices you speak of, stem from the emotion of love, in certain cases...

and, whoever said that love was ever rational, or even reasonable?

Virtue isn't impossible to achieve, because virtue exists, just not in everyone, at least not all the time, and as far as it being boring, well, that attitude just takes you back to square one with the vices, if you ask me...

but, this is only my input.