Please explain how people of color are racist. -- Josie Leger In the summer of 1982, I had just graduated from Beach Channel High School. I had ended up in a crazy summer street theater production A Trucker Named Joe. It was billed as a Truckers Anti-Nuke Musical. In the production were Lauren and Loraine Velez. They were of Puerto Rican descent. I, of course, am white. We were coming home on the A Train late one night after whatever-it-was we had been practicing in our acting class that night. Trust exercises, or clowning or some minor juggling. All very hippy-dippy actor stuff. At a certain stop in that interminable stretch between Brooklyn and Queens a group of black men boarded the subway car. They did not take a liking to the fact that I was talking to these women of color. They began to try to intimidate us, asking my friends to abandon me and, with great braggadocio and absolutely no shame, started flirting badly, suggested that my friends hang out with them instead. Moreso, they warned me I shouldnt be seen in public with women of color. They loomed over me. They began to threaten me. If I was you, one said, Id get off at the next stop. Of course, I knew if I got off at the next station they were going to jump me. When the station that I was supposed to get off at came and went, it was pretty tense. I was steeling myself to fight, if need be. Fortunately, at the next stop, the Guardian Angels (yes, Curtis Sliwas group) boarded the train. A short Hispanic woman stood in front of a support pole and watched over everything. Not long thereafter, she got backup, in the form of a very wide gentleman also bearing the red beret and white t-shirt. We were saved! The three guys who had been threatening us backed away, and eventually, with some grousing and distant Better watch your back sort of bad-mouthing, skulked off the train a few stops later. It was many more stops later before we saw any Transit police. By that point, things might have turned out very differently. ..... After I moved to California, yet still well over a decade ago I was working with a game company that had its offices in Oakland, California. I had been working late, and there was still someone in the offices working even later. He let me out and locked the door. I walked to my Toyota Corolla, which was parked just a few feet away. A gang of black youths, men and women, saw me enter my car. They had been at the far corner. They walked over and surrounded the vehicle. Taunts began. Threats. A few stood on my hood. One began to jump up and down on the hood. They wanted me to get out. They goaded me, and ridiculed me. What you gonna do about it? I sat there waiting. Fortunately, that was as bad as it got. Eventually they got bored and left. I drove home, with a big dent in the hood. Black people can indeed be racist. They can be ignorant, obnoxious, look down on others and hurl insults just like anyone else. Right now, white people in the country have convinced themselves that there is far more black racism and reverse discrimination than there likely exists. Much of this is fueled, unsurprisingly, due to the increasingly bleached political landscape of the Republican party. Yet I also appreciate this comment about the difference between prejudice and racism from a 1991 Spike Lee interview: _________ Black people cant be racist, he said. Racism is an institution. Although black people can be prejudiced, Lee allowed, we dont have the power to enforce the sweeping institutional racism that perpetuates social, economic and political inequality. __________ Fair enough, Spike. Ill buy that argument. While I might use the word racism to describe the prejudicial way I felt treated, it wasnt racism in the sense of the segregation of white and black lunch counters. It wasnt racism in the sense of apartheid. It wasnt racism in the sense of how Native Americans were forcibly removed from their own lands or slaughtered. It wasnt racism in the sense of wearing a gold Star of David on my camp uniform. Yet black people, Asian people, Hispanics, whites -- everyone -- can show prejudice. Source: articles.chicagotribune/2013-07-10/news/ct-oped-0710-page-20130710_1_racist-blacks-whites
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 05:21:42 +0000
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