Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Experience of Racism

[Spice_Weasel]

One of my best friends from Jr. High and High School, who is biracial, recently posted about a personal experience she had when she was a freshman in high school. In her own words, in a letter to the editor she submitted about her fears of Donald Trump…

Perhaps this is an improbable fear. After all, the odds that I or my children will encounter a white supremacist who will then act on that ideology through violence is unlikely in modern America. They are a dying breed. A sect that the rest of White, Christian America tells me is not representative of their beliefs. But I am afraid. I am reminded of the fear and grief that I felt in 1998 as a new high school freshman in an almost exclusively white school in rural Michigan when my personal agenda was stolen, and then stuffed into my locker the next day with the words “Go back where you came from, nigger” and a date marked “This is the day you die if you stay” scrawled in it.

This happened in 1998.

And I, her best friend, never knew about it. That’s the part getting to me the most. I have been close with this woman for 21 years, and I did not know this happened to her. The idea that there is this entire experience of the world that minorities don’t trust white people with makes me feel ashamed and helpless. (Yes, I know the dialog has gone more mainstream, but it’s not enough.) It’s comparable, maybe, to the number of men running around with no idea how common sexual assault is for women. It’s hard for anyone to speak up in an environment where people ignore, minimize, or otherwise invalidate their experiences. Mostly I just want to go back in time and take a bat to the head of the motherfucker that did this, but that’s probably not a helpful response either.

For those willing to talk about it, I’m interested in knowing about your own experiences of racism and how you relate to your white friends in light of it. Did you tell them? How did they react? What do we need to do to make it okay to talk about this?

[Kent_Clark]

My kids were called “nigger” in school and they weren’t even black (they’re white/Asian.)

They tell me (I’m the white part of the family) that there’s always a subtle undertow of “you’re different” in their lives.

[Spice_Weasel]

I’ve been reading a lot about transracial adoption (something my husband and I are considering) and one thing that came up a lot in the course we took is that kids may feel responsible for protecting their white parents and thus may hide or minimize the discrimination they face. I would hope our kids would come to us if something like that ever happened, but I understand the instinct to protect parents is strong.