Background: I’m very, very white and downright pale at times. Location: KFC restaurant, Denver, somewhat near the airport.
I stop in at KFC during a biz trip. I like KFC though I probably am giving up lifespan eating there I order my food, look around and find a table to sit and eat. On the way to the table a 5 year old looking kid, (did I mention that he was about 5?) looks at me and says “You’d better be scared!”. I look around, puzzled, don’t see anything out of the ordinary and ask him why. He says “You’d better be scared cuz you shouldn’t be in here!”. I then notice the kid is black and the whole restaurant is black. Honestly, I didn’t see it, but it doesn’t upset me either and I had experienced no hostility whatsoever. I go to my table, eat leisurely and leave.
WTF!?!?!
What kind of people put thoughts like this into a young kids head? Thinking about the conversation, I believe the kid knew what he was saying and he had a look in his eyes. Not hate really, but if anything…annoyance. This is fucking sick and I am repulsed. It is episodes like this that really bring home to me the complete stupidness of racism. I get an emotional understanding of what racism is. However, I still am sickened and repulsed that a 5 year old spends his time thinking about these things and can’t help but feel he’ll grow up to be a stinking, festering heap of dung.
We got stuck in an interminable line at the car rental place behind this black dude who had obviously made up his mind to play “Scare the crackers” to pass the time.
He keeps going on about how all his friends are in jail, and then showed us pictures of him flipping off the White House at the Million Family March. (Way to represent. I’m so impressed. yawn When the fuck do we get our Ford Escort?) He tells us that the kids are the future. They the ones gonna rise up and fight. They been raised to fight the power, he says. He leaned closer and narrowed his eyes. “They raised to kill.” (Check watch. Count line. Mentally compute average customer per minute rate to be 0.082.)
Then he says, “I bet you voted for Bush.” “No sir, I voted for Nader,” I said. He turned to his little girl, who was being coralled by his wife. His wife was rolling her eyes openly at his behavior. He said to the little girl, “What do we think of George Bush? We hate him.” And the little kid said, “Nuh-huh. We don’t hate anyone because hate is ugly.”
And it is episodes like this that are, in a lot of cases, the reason for racism. As long as there are people that consider themselves to be superior to everybody else, there will be racism. It makes absolutely no difference whether the person is white, black, green, red purple or orange. Hate is something that is learned. It is NOT something that a person is born with. Like the 5 year old in your OP. He learned that, most likely from his parents or a friend. He was not born with that hate.
Maybe the kids was just talking about the food. The idea of eating KFC sure scares the heck out of me. <shudder> Surely a restaurant not fit for man nor beast.
I’d be like, “Kid, why? This looks like a nice place, full of nice people.” Act clueless. If he said something racist, I’d act shocked-“Well, I’m sure glad I don’t judge people by their appearance!”
I dunno about that. It seems to me that the brain has a tendency to lump people into types, catagories we use to predict things. From there it is a very short leap to thinking in terms of “them” and “us”. If our brain isn’t hardwired to think tribally it is at least wired to have a prounounced tendnecy to think that way. Using color as the main determiner of “us” and “them” is, of course, cultural. Rwanda showed us how little that mattered.
I say this only because I don’t think it is enough to merely fail to teach kids to hate. We have to activly teach them (and police our own minds) to keep from falling into patterns of thought which encourage thinking in terms of “people like them” and “people like us.”
I order my food, look around and find a table to sit and eat. On the way to the table a 5 year old looking kid, (did I mention that he was about 5?) looks at me and says “You’d better be scared!”. I look around, puzzled, don’t see anything out of the ordinary and ask him why. He says “You’d better be scared cuz you shouldn’t be in here!”. I then notice the kid is black and the whole restaurant is black. Honestly, I didn’t see it, but it doesn’t upset me either and I had experienced no hostility whatsoever. I go to my table, eat leisurely and leave.