How many of you out there have personally been the target of racism? (This also includes homophobia, religious discrimination, misogyny, and any other form of intolerance.)
What happened and how did you react?
What did it feel like and what was the eventual outcome?
Have any of you ever been able to change a racist’s mind and make him see the error of his ways?
I got totally ignored in a roadside shop in South Africa, in 1998.
My friend and I were probably the only white guys in a 100 km radius.
I was pissed off a first, but then I realised that being able to hop back in that expensive rental car and try the next store is an incredible luxury when compared to a lifetime of oppression by another race.
I wished the store owner a good day, and walked away.
This one is also a reverse racism one as I am white.
I was with a friend (also white) in New Orleans and we were wandering all over the city and were quite a bit outside the French Quarter and felt like getting some food. It being our first trip to the South we decided to try some authenticate fried chicken and Bar-B-Q and stopped in at a small restaurant where everyone was black. We got dirty looks for walking in, and no service, so we just got up and walked out.
I did not say anything to anyone there, but they were clearly not interested in our business. And no, I did not manage to change their opinion of us ‘white devils’
I made an appointment with the director of my graduate program to get his okay for applying for the PhD program. I was a master’s student but wanted to stay on. He gave me a very lukewarm go-ahead, questioning why I might want to get a doctorate. I was crushed, and really surprised, and bewildered because when I applied as a Master’s candidate, they seemed to really want me. A few months later my advisor–a leader in my field and someone who’d encouraged me–asked why I hadn’t applied yet. I told her that the director hadn’t been very encouraging. She just laughed and said “He didn’t even read your file. You’re young, female, and blonde. That’s why he was discouraging.” I was shocked. And madder than hell. Really mad. And I thought about applying to a PhD program at a different school because I didn’t want to be in a place where I could be judged like that. But I sucked it up and applied anyway, resolved to show him how damned wrong he was to underestimate me based on appearances.
Still, this is utter small potatoes given the realities of race discrimination. I feel embarrassed mentioning it, even though it was so shocking to me at the time.
I worked at a children’s clothing store when I was fifteen. And when I was trained to work the register, I was told that ‘when black people want to write a check we need three forms of i.d. They probably won’t have it, so they can’t write a check…which is good. Black people bounce checks all the time’. When I asked if this was a policy with all checkwriters they said “oh no, just the blacks. We know our white customers, and trust them”
So I went to my supervisors office (after working there about two months and dreading having to quit my very first job) and explained that this policy was so racist it was crazy and she said “but who does it hurt? Can’t you just humor my father?”
So I quit.
I don’t know what became of it.
When I was shopping around for my current car, one used car salesman told me their dealership doesn’t take drug money. It wasn’t until later that day I realized how racist and ugly this statement was.
Also, there’s no such thing as reverse racism. It’s just racism.
Not racism, but religious harrassment. I’ve mentioned this episode before.
In 1999, I participated in a beautiful Shavuot tradition. (Shavuot is a Jewish holiday to celebrate the giving of the Torah to Moses. It’s in the spring, and Christians sometimes call it Pentecost.) I stayed awake all night with friends, and we learned Torah, and then, at about 4 am, we walked down to the Western Wall. The party I was with was quite Orthodox, and my close friend Jos and I were a little uncomfortable with that tradition, so we elected to join the egalitarian minyan that was just beginning its service a little ways back from the Wall itself.
The barriers and military police should have been a tip-off to the kind of harrassment we would endure.
Black-coated ultra-Orthodox (mostly children) stood around and shouted insults at us for the entire time. They made the most noise whenever a woman read from the Torah. It was just awful. That parents would encourage their kids to spread so much hate at people because their religious beliefs differed somewhat, was sickening. A holy day, and this is how you choose to spend it? They want all Jews to be exactly the same as them. The thought sickens me.
Have I experienced any real racism, or suffered because of it? No, not at all.
Still, I’ve gotten to hear some ugly things, because while I’m 100% Irish and Catholic, I have a family name that SOUNDS Jewish (suffice it to say, if I’d been on that hijacked TWA plane when the Arab terrorists asked stewardess Uli Derickson to pick out the passengers with Jewish names, I’d have been on the death list for sure!).
A few times, when I was a kid accompanying my Mom to a store, I’d regularly hear a merchant or clerk say things like, “God, these Jewish broads are so pushy,” when she made a simple request, or tried to do something like get a refund or exchange (in reality, my Mom was neither Jewish NOR pushy!)
The Christian Pentecost is different from this. (It celebrates the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles after the Ascension of Jesus).
I’m white and male, so living where I do, never happens to me personally. Had to deal with it a few times though.
My father said, “Well, I’m afraid it will not be possible for us to do business,” and turned down the job and the (rather large amount of) money. I was very proud of him.
Things ain’t too bad now, because I can hide my ethnicity, am now assimilated and I’m also quite big and have that certain look that means people don’t mess with me often, but growing up being Romani and travelling sucks - to put it mildly.
I went to loads of schools, not for very long though. We’d move to a new area and after a day or two some social worker would come and tell my dad that I had to be in a school (this is before special Traveller education programs), so next day we’d get in the van and pop over to the one suggested and I’d start me some education. What fun! Especially the day my dad dropped me off at one school and instead of letting me in to teach me something, the headmaster called the police to remove me from the premises.
Anyway, those schools that actually let me in were hellish. I would be sat at a desk and belittled for several hours. Most of the teachers treated me as though I was infectious. I was often insulted and beaten by those bastards; “Dirty Gyppo*”, “Stupid Gyppo” and “worthless” were terms I heard daily. The worst injury I received at the hands of a teacher was when one grabbed me by the front of my shirt, told my I was a worthless Gyppo and threw me backwards across the room - My flight abruptly stopped by smacking the small of my back on the edge of a table. Shit, I’ve had backache for the last 24 years because of that.
Lunchtime and break were wonderful times, if I was lucky the other kids would just tell me that Gypsies couldn’t play with them. Suited me fine, because I didn’t want to play with them very much. I wasn’t lucky very often though and spent many a happy time listening to “my mother said I never, never should play with Gypsies in the wood.” being chanted by a gaggle of giggling schoolgirls and having the crap kicked out of me by the lads (always managed to get a couple of good whacks in, mind). Oh, those heady days of childhood.
Nearly forgot, everytime something went missing in the classroom, I’d be the one the other kids would look at and the first one the teacher would get to turn out his pockets.
So, I’d put up with this shit for a day or two (longest I ever lasted was a week) then just not bother going again.
Kal
*For the benefit of Dopers not from the UK, “Gyppo” is the Romani version of the ‘N’ word.
I used to live across an alley from an old black lady who called me “cracker” every time I walked outside. Granted, I lived in a low-income black neighborhood, and my roommate and I were the only white people for about 2 miles, but I had never done anything to her. We were poor college students who couldn’t afford anything better than a cheap apartment in a bad section of town.
I just ignored her. After a while, it just became the sound I expected as soon as I opened the door. It kind of went along with the bang of the screen door. Everyone else in the neighborhood was polite, so it didn’t really matter what one jackass said.
Now, the homeless guy that lived in the car behind my apartment building was another story. He liked to get really drunk and pull a gun on my roomie and me when we walked from the car to the house. One night he told me that he was going to kill the white boy, and my white ass was next. So, I called the cops, who came and told me that there was nothing they could do, as he was on private property and apparently had the permission of the landlord to be there. (Apparently a threat didn’t mean much to the cops.)
Needless to say, roomie and I found multiple crap-paying jobs and moved to a better apartment as soon as our lease was up.
Well, it’s not really racism but it is intolerance. I wear hearing aids and while they work extremely well, there’s still stuff I miss. Now that I’m in high school it’s not as bad, but in elementary school and even into middle school it was prime fodder for teasing. It didn’t really affect me then, though, as I could just ignore them or tease them right back.
However now that I’m in high school–and people expect more from me, as I’m nearly an adult–I’m encountering some intolerance more. Okay, so it’s not outright intolerance, but more like people just not knowing how to act around me just because I can’t hear as well as other folks. A few times adults have assumed I’m just being a surly teenager because I didn’t respond to their questions, when I didn’t hear a word they said. (Sometimes they continue assuming this even after I explain about my hearing impairment.)
I recall a specific example when I was in the public library once, checking out my books. My mother was there as well. The librarian asked me a question and I didn’t hear her. Mom explained patiently “she wears hearing aids and sometimes doesn’t hear people when they speak.” (That sentence happens to be very embarassing.)
So from then on, the librarian addressed all her questions to mom, speaking as if I wasn’t there, and speaking in a very loud tone of voice with exaggerated lip movements.
I am, however, grateful to my friends and other people who continue to act normally around me, without giving a second thought to my aids. It’s not as if they’re constantly out in the open after all. I’ve had friends who didn’t find out about it for years, because I don’t go around broadcasting it. It’s just a certain percentage of people who can’t handle meeting someone like me. I don’t get it myself, but that’s what happens.
(Seems embarassing compared to other horrifying tales in this thread, though.)
My family is white and my foster siblings aren’t - I have a black foster sister who has a daughter, and a little baby foster brother whose birth parents are Mexican. When I take the little Mexican baby for a walk or carry him in the store, people gush over him, assuming he’s mine and not noticing that his skin is half a shade darker than mine. He’s pale, therefore it’s ok for him to be mine, apparently. But when I take the little black girl baby with me, I get horrible dirty looks from the people who assume she’s mine. She’s dark, therefore I must have committed the cardinal sin of INTERRACIAL SEX OH MY GOD NO. One woman asked “Is that yours?” Not “Is she yours,” but “Is that yours.”
I was once accused of racism (very loudly) when I turned down a boy for a date.
I do not like threads such as this. It only encourages feelings of bitterness and victimization. Very little good and much strife are all that can come of it.
I was in a hospital waiting area once (12 or so years old), and the only other two people there, an Africo-American couple in their early 20s probably.
The gal goes on and on telling the guy, “White people make me sick. White people smell like dogs. I don’t like white people.”
Nothing personal happened to me. She was just saying it so that I could hear it.
But I never forgot it, and now, years later, I do it myself sometimes. If I’m in a restaurant, and have an Africo-American server who seems to be having trouble with another table–when that table leaves, I often say something like “Did that table give you a hard time? You know, white people really get on my nerves!”
A lot of white people I know think that blatant racism no longer happens. Threads like this show otherwise.
I was at college in AV waiting for my husband and and one clerk refused to acknowledge blacks at all. A young woman came in an wanted a Spanish tape. I was not working there, but knew where the tapes were and got her one and showed her where to sign it out. When she left he yelled a me for enouraging niggers. I reported him but nothing was done.
Personally, I’m dreading the hassle of finding a new apartment after our lease expires on our current one (the neighborhood is great, the landlord is great, the view is great, but if we decide to have kids, we’re probably going to have to move to a bigger place in a cheaper area). The last time my wife and went apartment hunting, the reactions we got ranged from the non-service of Century 21 (funny, they’d seemed so eager to see us when it was just my wife talking to them on the phone, but once they saw me, there was suddenly a ‘problem’ with the apartment and they coudn’t show it to us anymore), to be told flat-out “we don’t want foreigners moving into our neighborhood.”
I’ve also gotten the “Japanese only” greeting at a number of clubs. I typically just shrug and go spend my money somewhere else.
I once watched a couple of drunk white guys beating the living snot out of a guy with an L shaped arm cast. I was trying to get from point A to point C at this festival that use to be a large drunken brawl.
I could not figure out what and why in the hell two guys were wailing on this guy with the broken arm. The guy I was with was stymied as well ( we were just pushing through) He asked and some guys looked at us and went, " Cause he’s a nigger, that’s why."
To say I was floored would be an understatement. I didn’t even see this guy’s color entering into it. I thought maybe the guy was a baby raper.
We pushed our way out of the crowd much faster and went to a payphone to call 911. I have no idea what happened.
You might be right Muad’Dib; let’s see how the dopers handle it.
I’ve experienced racist reaction and commentary as I would suspect almost everybody has. When I drove a cab, I worked a lot on the east side of Austin, which was primarily Hispanic, and the upper east side, which was mainly black. Most people were OK, but it would happen every so often, and if there was a crowd, nobody was going to argue with the harasser - you were on your own. I think I got through some of those situations because I was driving a cab, and that at least made me “street.”
But what comes to mind is living in Japan when I was a kid. The first time was probably just too soon after WWII, and while I was young enough then that I didn’t roam too far on my own often, I had a few folks go off on me, all adults. Usually it just frightened me a bit to have an adult screaming at me, but the occasional one who spoke English could scare me.
We went back in the early '60’s, and things had changed. By then, although still a child, I was as big as most middle-aged Japanese adults. I still had the odd adult of WWII age twist-off on me, but the problems really came from people around my own age. My best friend was nisei, and lived about two klicks away. To get to his place I had to walk through a village where I’d often pick up a crowd of Japanese boys who would chase me and throw rocks. I was the only gejein around, and they “knew” me after a while. Rocks hurt when they connect.
While Billy, my friend, could have melted away into the crowd, he never did. Finally, after almost a year of pursuits, we had a peace conference with the Japanese kids. But we could never achieve such with the Korean kids (who were second class citizens in Japan). And Billy’s dad, who’d been an IJN carrier pilot during the war, never acknowledged my presence, despite my spending countless hours and many nights under his roof.
I think it’s indisputable that there are racists of every stripe, and to hold to such a standard is somewhere between indescribably stupid and/or evil. Or just plain silly.
To balance things out, let me add that the majority of Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and Whites that I’ve known are not at all racially driven. We still lived in Japan when Douglas MacArthur died, and I can’t tell you how many Japanese stopped me on the street to offer me, a kid, their condolences.