Nothing too major, but last year a neighbor (who is otherwise nice) mentioned that he “had to Jew them down” on a purchase he had made. He probably forgot we were Jewish.
Obviously well past the limits of the OP - in the mid-1970’s my parents and I were at a real estate office in the central Bronx, talking to them about apartments, when a black family came in and was told “Sorry, no apartments are available right now.” The family left and the agent went right back to telling us about their available apartments. I guess we should have left, but I was 12 and not in charge of the situation.
Of course! Those are all violations of human rights, irrespective of religion. I was referring to the recurring idea that, rather than just respecting people as people, we are obligated to respect all of their “beliefs,” and the actions that stem therefrom, no matter how silly/backward/factually incorrect/harmful-to-themselves-and-others.
Plus, if one’s religion is correct and holy, how could there be bad stuff in there?
It’s a public school. The neighbors are constantly trying to get the public school to observe Christian holidays and not Jewish ones. Or Muslim ones or any other ones. For example, my neighbors have literally written letters demanding we stop allowing kids to have off Yom Kippur but we do allow them off Good Friday. It is annoying as fuck. I get a lot of resentment from some of them when arguing otherwise to the school superintendent.
Either observe all religious holidays or observe none. They’re also being asked to do projects on subjects like Christmas Around the World and sing Christmas songs. When I politely asked if they could include other celebrations on the project, I was told that was not acceptable. I also asked my daughter’s teacher to sing a few Hanukah songs as well as Christian ones She did so but with a very snotty tone.
In other words my neighbors and our local elementary school teachers are trying to turn Christianity into the norm in the public schools. It is both annoying and ongoing. I am made to feel like a disrespectful bitch for simply demanding equal religious treatment or religiously neutral assignments in the public schools that I help finance. I deeply resent having to deal with this shit from people who don’t seem to understand the concept of separation of church and state or understand the concept that if you want a religious education you need to send your kids to parochial schools.
I’d let them know that you are very willing to discuss the situation with the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). It might change their attitude a bit, but you have to be willing to follow through.
I used to teach HS in North Carolina, and they were always trying to get religion into the school. In a science department meeting, one suggested that we add course work on intelligent design (that is what they were calling creationism at the time). I suggested that we stick to teaching science in the science classes.
Another day, they had the annual rally around the flagpole. This is the annual demonstration to get prayers back in the school. They gather before school to say prayers around the flagpole. I 100% support their right to do that. They followed it up by having a morning prayer read to the entire school over the school public address system, implying this would be a new daily thing. I 100% do not support that. At my next free period, I visited the principal and informed him that if there was ever another morning prayer over the school PA system, I would be contacting the ACLU without hesitation. Never heard another morning prayer over the PA.
Working with Australians who used to joke loudly and openly about running over Aborigines with their cars*. I like Australians as a rule, but some of them have a nasty racist streak.
Why are Aborigines called “boongs”?
Because that’s the noise they make when you run them over, haw haw.
About a year ago I was waiting in the checkout line when the Angry White Guy in front of me started ranting about the woman in front of him who had brown skin and was wearing a headscarf. “Damn Muslims ruining the neighborhood,” that sort of thing.
A middle-aged white woman next to me lit into him, calling him a nasty bigot, and when he started arguing with her I joined in (I’m a middle-aged white guy). We were both telling him he was ignorant racist and that if he didn’t want to live around people different from him he had no business living in Los Angeles.
What was really funny was that this was all happening right in front of the checker (Asian), the bagger (Hispanic), and the maintenance man (black). After AWG stormed off the employees all started laughing about what an asshole he was and how much they hated him. Of course, since he was a customer they couldn’t tell him off to his face, but they certainly enjoyed watching other customers do it.
The checker told me a few months later AWG finally got banned from the store for being abusive.
That guy indeed sounds like an asshole, and that was totally abusive and unwarranted, but not technically racist. Religion is not race, and racism is the belief that humans are biologically divided into different races, with different immutable characteristics.
Speaking of which, it’s indeed a problem when Muslims (but not only Muslims!) do indeed ruin neighborhoods via misogyny, homophobia, sex-negative prudishness, etc. Recently, someone from the National Secular Society told the UN: “Fear of being thought racist ‘blinds’ people to religious discrimination against women.”
Just a joke stemming from the fact that we were there on vacation.
Another racist moment, this one in West Virginia:
I saw a pickup truck with two bumper stickers on it. One said “ANGRY WHITE MALE”. the other had a confederate flag on it, along with the words made famous by MLK: “I HAVE A DREAM.”
So true. Also fear of being thought anti-Semitic. As a Jew, I am not overly fond of some of the damned sexism in my own community. Religion is not an acceptable shield for homophobia or sexism.
I was driving through Connecticut a few years back with my family. We were on the highway, trying to get to a relative’s wedding, when a beige SUV passed by on our side. The passengers had their windows down. They looked at us, poked their heads out, and started yelling a few racial slurs at us (including the N word). Seconds later, they sped up to an exit and drove off.
Definitely not one of my better family experiences.
This probably sounds trite but it totally pissed me off:
I have an uncle that is really into baseball. And we talk about baseball a lot (when we do talk, that is). Last time he was in town I took him to a game and it turned out to be cold and rainy, but we still sat there because we both love baseball.
For some reason we were talking about my team’s shortstop, who has been one of the most consistently awesome players on the team since he came up in 2008 and is my favorite player because he’s so good, and my uncle said in all seriousness that I “like him because he’s cute.”
Not kidding - he was serious. And had a very confused look on his face when I chewed him out for assuming I was in to baseball for the hot guys. And for the record, the shortstop is probably the least good-looking guy on the team.
My own worst example was more funny and pathetic than hurtful. Several years back, when I had long hair, I was walking hand-in-hand with my wife downtown. Some girl drove by and stuck her head out of her SUV, shouting at us, “Jesus hates lesbians!”
The fact that you’re not sexually attractive to many people isn’t an example of discrimination. The fact that you pity yourself so much and see women who don’t find you attractive as bigots, however, might be something to explore with a therapist.
A few years ago I was interviewing candidates for an IT analyst for a project at work. One of the interviewees was an older white woman who I kinda sorta knew from a local pub - I’d been introduced to her and seen her a few times while hanging out in the bier garden. To set the context, I too am an older white woman. This occurred during the recession, in a Silicon Valley high-tech company.
So, when I came to the interview room, her eyes lit up. Understandable - I guess it’s comforting to see someone of your own demographic as a decision maker on your job prospects.
Sadly, after I told her about the position, she came right in with a question: “Are there a lot of Indians on this project? I’ve heard [company name] has tons of Indians working here - is that true?” I was a bit flustered and hesitated a second (did she just SAY that???) and she jumped right in again: “Isn’t it hard to work with them? Their accents are so weird and they’re so weird and I hear they lie and oh my god they SMELL . . .”
At that point my brain engaged and I wound up the interview.
The project manager (from Delhi) asked me later why it was a short interview and I just said “not a good fit”. Understatement of the decade - a lot of my co-workers are in fact from South Asia, and other places not in North America. This woman’s head would have exploded before she even got badged.
Stupid woman. Hoisted on her own petard. She figured my very WASP looks and age would yield a fellow bigot or at least some sympathetic beliefs. Not this time.
It’s so weird when people just assume strangers must share their bigotry. That happened to my BIL right after he and my sister moved into their new house. A neighbor welcomed him to the neighborhood and immediately started to give him an unsolicited rundown on the racial makeup of the place, telling him the good news that, while there were a few Asian neighbors, there weren’t really any black people living there. Nothing about my BIL gives any indication that he only wants to live amongst Aryans.