My grandparents and my wife’s grandparents both grew up in the South. They are intelligent, kind people, but very racist. I don’t even try to correct them when they refer to some friends of mine as “colored people.” I don’t see why I should upset them by making a big deal out of it.
Certain members of my immediate family (mostly my brothers) seem to think that there IS no racism, that black people especially blow it out of context. This is usually when they’re griping about affirmative action. They don’t understand that right then, AT THAT MOMENT, they are making judgments based on skin color, thus invalidating their own arguments. I’d like to give them a week of being in ethnic minority status and see what they thought then. Alas, that’s not possible (notwithstanding the approach taken in the somewhat silly movie “Soul Man”).
As a side note, my best friend in high school (a little over a decade ago–how did that happen?) was black. (Still is. 
) Anyway, there was a smaller town about 15 miles from our somewhat larger town, and she was afraid to be in that town after sunset, the only thing she was EVER afraid of, as far as I could tell. How sad is that?
Another side note: it’s interesting to me that some people seem to think that if a person believes he or she belongs to the “right” religion, that person is exhibiting bigotry. While intolerance of others’ beliefs is certainly objectionable–and unfortunately pretty common–what is the purpose of belonging to a particular religion if you don’t believe in its tenets?
Dooku, I’m sure you have other examples to offer which would show that your grandparents are racist, but I don’t think their use of the word “colored” necessarily does the trick. The thing is (and older dopers correct me if I’m wrong here), I think that “colored” as well as “Negro” were as acceptable at one point in time as black (or Black) and African-American are now. Apprently, even n—er (I probably could spell out that word on the SDMB, but I won’t–too offensive) was originally not a slur, though it has been considered one for nearly two centuries.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/nigger.htm)
I’m no etymologist, though, so I may not be right.
Well, they’re not just using “colored people” to identify them from other people that I know. There’s disdain in their voices, as in “why is my grandson associating with those COLORED people.”
Oh, well … that’s a horse of a different color. So to speak.
Mmm… yeah, that sounds about right. Just out of curiosity, what about him made you characterize him as “intelligent”? Not that I’m doubting your word. I mean, the guy did found his own church :rolleyes: after all.
By the way, have you seen this?
Originally posted by cuauhtemoc:
This may or may not be considered a nitpick, but Matt Hale didn’t found the World Church of the Creator. A world-class wacko named Ben Klassen did, back in 1973. This article on the ADL website is a pretty thorough history of the outfit, if your gag reflex threshold is up to it.
And personally, I’ve known people who were almost as far out there. Hell, I was raised by one, but discretion and common sense compel me to skip the details. I’ll say this much, though: That shit is poison of a particularly virulent nature. It takes a long time to work itself out of the system, and will screw a kid up for years after he’s rejected it intellectually.
I’ve known a # of racist folks. When I was growing up (Missouri, 1950s) they were pretty common in all social strata.
But what I remember most is driving down South on family vacations & seeing all the gas stations that’d been built with 3 bathrooms - Men, Women & Colored.
Less than 50 years ago, those things still existed.
A couple of weeks after 9/11, I pulled into a gas station to get a fill-up. A Sikh guy served me and then afterwards asked if he could get a ride home. Since I was feeling guilty about all the Middle Eastern/Arab bashing going on, I decided to do a good deed and help him out.
We start going up the street and he asks “What are you?” (I get it alot). Nervously I tell him that I’m black and it sets him off. He starts by calling the black people “around here” niggers, who only want to have sex and do drugs. He keeps talking and I get this ill feeling in my stomach. I mean, WTF! I’m helping HIM out, right? The least he could do is not disrespect me by calling me a nigger. I have to admit; I had some bad, ugly thoughts after he did that.
But I remained polite and cordial, dropping him off right in front of his building. The whole thing blew my mind though. I decided from that point on that I wouldn’t go to that gas station ever again. And I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking giving a perfect stranger a ride home. He could have been holding up that gas station for all I know. So maybe I deserved it.
I’m pleased that every single respondent so far acknowledges encountering racists. It’s my personal belief that, if you haven’t seen it; either you’re very young, or you’re just not looking very hard and you don’t want to see it anyway.
I was in a dinner party of four when I ran into my most recent racist. He opposed government funded medical treatment for illegal aliens, which in itself is no sure sign. But as we discussed the implications of implementing his policy, it boiled down to, “There are too many Mexicans. If we let them die, they might not come here.” He actually used the term “brown hoards”. I laughed aloud, I couldn’t imagine it as anything other than a joke. It wasn’t.
This guy is a mid-level administrator at a Big Ten university.
Okay, first of all, that link made me damn near fall out of my chair laughing.
As for Hale, well… Uhm… I called him intelligent because he was doing well in the class I was in with him. Seemed to grasp math pretty darn well. Beyond that, can’t really say. Only had him in the one class.
Hordes, not hoards. Unless we’re secretly stockpiling those people just to piss that guy off. Winky emoticon.
Well it’s the 12th of July, I’m in Northern Ireland, and I can’t leave the house because the place is over-run with drunken Orangemen.
Tonight there will be bonfires and probably rioting because William of Orange (Protestant) defeated King James II (Catholic) at the battle of the Boyne about 300 years ago.
So yes, I’ve met a few bigots recently.
They range from complete Neanderthals, to intelligent people who have a huge black spot when it comes to certain communities, ethnicities, cultures and beliefs.
None of them can explain rationally their hatred and fear of “them”, but they all cling to it and ignore anything that might topple their little worldview of hatred.
I think a degree of racism/bigotry is ingrained in nearly everybody’s personality. But if you’re talking Klan-level overt racist, yeah. I’ve met a few (mostly educated, middle-class types with some kind of mugging or rape at the hands of Black people in their background). And they have more in common with “normal” people than we’d like to admit.
One guy was a motel owner in the Norfolk area. The word “nigger” flew off his tongue as naturally as can be. He was an older man, who came of age in the 40s and 50s, before the Civil Rights movement had made many inroads. Genuinely charming and quite the raconteur, he told a joke that spoke volumes about his personal philosophy:
Have you seen Blood in the Face? One of the more uncomfortable things about it is that some of the people shown in it have, in addition to White Separatist/Supremacist attitudes, some genuinely admirable qualities. The skinhead who preaches his White Separatist rap in a Black neighborhood with no mob watching his back, for instance. His audience didn’t appreciate the message, but they were very impressed with his sheer balls. The bit with Michael Moore talking to the Klan-ette in a camouflage bikini was telling as well: “You don’t look like you belong in the Klan, you look like you belong in a Coppertone commercial!”
Finally, there’s a book called Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson. Most of the book is cheap laughs at the expense of the obviously inbred (like the Klan meeting where the Grand Dragon’s wife is trying to impart tips on PR-savvy to an unwashed horde of bubbas), but the bit about Rachel Weaver (Randy Weaver’s infant daugher from the Ruby Ridge incident, all grown up now) was not so easy to dismiss. The comfortable, sensible world I know will never make sense to her and there’s nothing in her background to make her think that it should. Your library probably has a copy.
I’ve had to tell my mom off a bit because of this one: you can tell that black people are lazy because they run the short races in track.
Simply amazing. For someone with an advanced medical degree, sometimes logic escapes her. My amazingly sweet grandmother taught her a bit of this, I think, having some latent racist attitudes from being born in rural Nebraska in 1915.
I told her that the Kenyans were making the distance races kind of boring by winning so much, and she said she was talking about American blacks. Eesh.
I stand corrected. :smack:
unfortunately, yes. and i’m not surprised by it either. i would chalk it up to human nature, personally. people have different tastes for different things and that also includes the kind of people.
Have I met any racists? Too often. I seem to be related to them.
Whne my sister Kim was in college, she dated a guy who was Fillipino (I’m probably spelling that wrong) for a few months. After they broke up, my mom said to me, “It’s really better this way - I’ rather have grandchildren with the same color blood.”
I remember looking straight into my mother’s face to see if she was joking, but she wasn’t. I have no memory of what I said or did, but her comment did remind me of a scene form an early “MASH” episode, where the racist soldier is anxious to get the “right color blood” froma white person.
Looking for Brick Wall to Bang Head Against,
Patty
Yeah, I thought you’d appreciate that. 
I sometimes wish I had the guts to pull a stunt like that.
Sadly, education and IQ have little or nothing to do with an open mind. I’ve known some quite well-educated bigots.
My father has a PhD in physics and a bachelor’s in law. He’s a lawyer now, working in constitutional law at the Supreme Court level. He’s hoping to get made a judge. He also believes First Nations people, as “conquered people,” should adopt the culture of their conquerors.
His brother, who an engineer who was once the president of a Canadian corporation, believes that Jews are secretly plotting world takeover.
My sister, who has a degree is psychology and creative writing, surprised me once by talking about how all Japanese people “think the same,” like they have, “a group mind.”
And that’s just a short list of racists and anti-semites in my immediate family. If you wanted a list of well-educated racists I’ve been acquainted with, or a list of homophobes, that would probably use up a couple pages of this thread 
When we talk about “educating” racists, we’re talking about a kind of “life-knowledge,” not “book-knowledge.” Usually, that kind of ignorance only ends when a person meets a few people of the group they’re bigoted against, and sees their prejudices are false. And sometimes, even that doesn’t work.