A contribution to International Blog Against Racism Week:
One time white me was out on the town with a black friend. We were wearing our very bestest clothes and looking very fine indeed. Especially my friend who is gorgeous no matter what she wears.
We needed a cab. She, being the seasoned New Yorker, stepped out onto the street with her arm out while I futzed about with my bag. Several cabs with their lights on zoomed by.
I looked up wondering why there were so many off-duty cabs at a non-off-duty time of night. More empty cabs went by. Not one had off-duty lights on. What the hell? I thought.
“Okay,” my friend said. “You try.”
We switched places. Seconds later. I kid you not—seconds—a cab stopped.
“Noooo!” I said.
“Yes,” my friend replied.
“Is it always like this?”
“Not always, but often enough.”
Update: Lili has a wonderful story in the comments.
It’s amazing how much of this sh*t is still out there. I keep thinking ‘Hey, we’re doing much better’, but just because it’s not happening to me doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Bleah.
That sucks.
My story about racism that i stole from a friend:
He (the friend) is in KFC in Sydney, standing in the queue to be served. Behind him are some posh private school boys (St Anthony’s? St Andrews? Something like that). In front of him is an American man and woman who, if they had been Australian, we could call Cashed Up Bogans (or CUBs). Serving at the KFC is a tall black guy (of african descent, not Aboriginal) who seems quiet and polite and good-looking. He probably goes to the same posh private school as the boys behind my friend.
the CUB’s get to the front of the line.
Tall Quiet Black Guy: Hi, can I help you?
CUB man: I ain’t having no nigger touching my food.
Everyone in KFC: *incredulity*
Tall Quiet Black Guy: I beg your pardon?
CUB man: I ain’t having no nigger touching my food.
at this point, my friend is thinking that he has to SAY something, but can’t think of what. Then, one of the St Whatever Boys pushes him aside, taps the CUB on the shoulder, and SPITS IN HIS FACE. Then the other St Whatever Boys all step forward and also SPIT IN HIS FACE. The KFC staff refuse to serve the CUB’s, and give the Boys free chips.
sometimes i think this country sucks, but other times i am very proud to be an australian.
Chris S. & Simone: Yup.
Lili: What a fabulous story! Far be it from me to condone spitting in people’s faces, but on them! So lovely to hear about people not putting up with that kind of bullshit.
Wow, Lilly, that stories like just wow!
yay posh private school boys.
i have no idea what a cashed up bogan is, but holy hamburger. unreal.
Not to play white-devils-advocate (heh), but where I live racism cuts both ways. The southwestern US, as one would expect, has a large hispanic population. I cannot count the number of times i have seen a few such individuals (business owners typically) who suddenly ‘forget’ how to speak english in a restaurant or something of that nature only to laugh it up amongst themselves (thus is why knowing spanish becomes a life-saver in Arizona…) To be sure this is a very VERY VERY small handful of people, but I would bet that nowadays it is no less than the number of caucasians who look down upon others.
I think too often racism is defined as white-vs-xyz which, at least from my perspective, falls way too short in addressing the full magnitude of the beast.
corey:
I believe the word for what you are experiencing there is called “teasing.” Being called a “nigger” is not the same as being teased. Not being able to do things like get a cab, rent an apartment, or get a housing loan is also not like being teased.
I think too often racism is defined as white-vs-xyz.
Actually, I have rarely seen any online discussion of racism where a white person doesn’t chime in to talk about trivial affronts like the one you describe. It happens every. Single. Time. And yet every single time, the white folks like to pretend that no one at all is speaking up for them–perhaps they don’t own TVs.
apologies to those offended. i did not mean to imply they were the same, only that it is what i have peronsally experienced. it feels like a little more than being teased tough…
did I seriously just type ‘peronsally’? But yeah, not comparing apples to grapes here, just bringing another perspective…I didn’t mean to sound like ‘that guy’, I swear!
i didn’t mean to sound so snappy, either.
maybe “teased” is the wrong word, and of course it is fair to say that we all feel singled out and disrespected for what we look like sometimes.
But history matters, and has never not mattered.
Once a former colleague of mine called Frank, an African American heavily into high culture like opera, was helping a friend move. He was standing on a sidewalk in Queens mopping his brow after carrying furniture up several flights of stairs, and his baseball cap had flopped over in his hand where he’d removed it.
Somebody passing dropped a buck in it.
Frank laughed. But, I mean…
I have an Egyptian/Australian Muslim friend over here in the states with me. He’s incredibly talented and the company he works for went head over heal to get him here and he needed them to. He holds dual citizenship. It took me 1 month to get a visa to come here. It took him 6 months. When I went to my appointment they asked me 2 questions and I had my visa the next day – they barely looked at all the documents my works lawyer had put together. When my friend when to the interview they drilled him and then told him they’d be in contact and he wouldn’t get his visa the next day.
He needed a security check which they didn’t tell him plus they made it sound like he wouldn’t get his visa. He had to wait another 5 months for them to finally give him his visa. But despite the constant discrimination he’s had through the whole process coming here he’s been cheery and positive as he’s a very up person. So he moves into an apartment here with an american woman. One day he comes back home after a date and his flat mate starts abusing him for going out with white women all the time “why don’t you date people your own kind or why don’t you date hispanic women? there are some great hispanic woman out there”. My friend was shocked, he’d never come across this kinda of criticism before. He didn’t know what to say. He thought he was going out with just the people he liked and in fact he’d been dating all types of people. He’d had a date with an african american and gone out with a jewish woman which for him was far more problomatic becasue of his familly. Still he had no idea how to respond. So he asked me….help ?
Justine, that thing about the cab amazes me every time. When I lived in NYC before, it only happened to me once or maybe twice. I thought that it was probably due to me being a woman with lighter brown skin. Since I’ve been back (we’re now in month 7) it’s happened to me at least 5 times. 75% of the time I’ve tried to get a cab. Sometimes I think about writing down their medallion #s and reporting them. Sometimes I think about stepping in front and forcing them to stop. If they hit me, they’re still in the wrong….
Corey: racism is prejudice + power. In America, only white people can be racist. Though what you’re talking about can be described as the actions of prejudiced people, it doesn’t equate to racism. It’s frustrating being a minority, and sometimes *I* want to speak a second language just so I can make nasty remarks out loud without having to be confrontational or to make someone feel just a tiny bit like I feel all of the time. It’s not a very positive reaction to frustration, but sometimes it’s all people have.
Niki: (wow, this is getting long!) I’m afraid that, no matter what your friend intends, in this country when minorities (in general, not all of them) see a brown man with a white woman, it seems as though the brown man is dissing brown women. I don’t necessarily agree with this viewpoint. You like who you like, ya know? But it has very deep-seated cultural and racial roots, this whole black men dating white women thing, and he isn’t going to be able to calm those who think it’s wrong or annoying or whatever with logic. In the end, he’ll have to decide if he wants to get into a debate on the subject and how personal he wants to get. Or, he could just ignore her and date who he likes.
I’ll admit, I often have a knee-jerk negative reaction when I see a brown-skinned man with a white woman. I don’t have the reaction for the reverse, though. That’s a prejudice of mine that I know I have to work on. Many others don’t see it as a negative reaction on their part.
OT:
What? No wikipedia love for Justine? Not cool. I made a short, sweet, un-fancy entry for you today. Hopefully somebody who knows more about this sort of thing will pretty it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justine_Larbalestier
And, er, to be *on* topic:
My friends and I openly mock those who randomly insert race into conversations. As in “I was at the grocery store and this black woman said this and that.” Why are you pointing it out? Would you say “this white woman”?
This has become so much a convention that when we talk you will often hear things like “The other day I was talking to this Chinese woman at work (wait for it, wait for it, it’s pertinent to the story) and she said . . .” 🙂
Amanda Coppedge said
“My friends and I openly mock those who randomly insert race into conversations. As in ‘I was at the grocery store and this black woman said this and that.’ Why are you pointing it out? Would you say ‘this white woman’?
This has become so much a convention…”
I HONESTLY don’t think that’s racism, not on the level that we are talking about. I think it is more the like-me syndrome, in that people tend to notice things that don’t match the familar, the like-me, and they will instinctively qualify that difference.
In my mind saying “I was talking to a black woman at work” is no more derogatory or racist as saying “I was talking to this blonde woman at work” – in the sense that the first woman was black, the second woman was blonde, and those are simply the characteristics which I noticed at the time. Granted, they may not be relevant at all to what I am talking about, but this is not racism it’s being a shade too observant of your surroundings and conveying the results of that observation to the people you are talking to. Or are you suggesting that my “talking to the blonde woman” immediately means that I am about to tell a blonde joke…?
If I *responded* to either the black woman or the blonde simply because they are black or blonde, that’s one thing. If I merely register their blackness/blondness as a factor of their physical description, something that helps me catalogue the encounter in my head as something SPECIFIC that happened to me, that’s a mnemonic, not a racist remark.
I mean, in Lili’s story upthread the guy serving at the KFC counter is described as black – and *people would have noticed that*. This noticing, as and of itself, is nothing bad. Responding to the fact of the guy’s blackness in the way that the idiot at the front of the line did, THAT’s racism. Squared. But I don’t think that anyone would accuse any of the other people in the line, those who merely looked and saw, with their mind’s eye, “a black man serving at the counter”, as having had an intrinsically “racist” thought. It was just a question of “there’s a guy serving at the counter who is in some way not like me”. That’s no more racist than some preppy schoolboy looking up and noticing some rastafarian’s dreadlocks, or vice versa. Just the THOUGHT doesn’t matter. It’s baggage that the thinker then adds to that thought that sometimes leads to hell.
I have a sudden urge to quote the lyrics of an avenue q song:
Everyone’s a little bit racist
Sometimes.
Doesn’t mean we go
Around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find
No one’s really color blind.
Maybe it’s a fact
We all should face
Everyone makes judgments
Based on race.
Everyone’s a little bit racist –
All right!
Bigotry has never been
Exclusively white
If we all could just admit
That we are racist a little bit,
Even though we all know
That it’s wrong,
Maybe it would help us
Get along.
(for all the lyrics, go here)
anghara: the point of amanda’s story, as i understand it, is that white people have a tendency not to *see* whiteness, such that we only describe the race/ethnicity of someone in our anecdote (or whatever) if they are not white. if you don’t specify, the person is assumed to be white. that positions whiteness as normative, and anything else as Other. which is not as virulently racist as the KFC guy, but is still an example of prejudice in how one sees the world.
i’m glad to hear about other people being mindful of this in their peer groups–the only person with whom i have that shared awareness + value + permission-to-call-out is my wife; i wish more people i knew practiced what amanda and her friends practice WRT this phenomenon.
Aaron: That’s how I understood Amanda’s post. I notice that tendency a lot in books where the only people who are described in terms of their skin colour are the people who aren’t white. The result is, as you say, everyone is assumed to be white unless the reader’s told otherwise.
That makes sense if the setting is, I don’t know, Iceland or some other largely white place, but I keep coming across it in books set in NYC and other places that have a mixed pop.
Thanks so much everyone for all the fabulous comments on this thread.
I know I’m late with this, but yes indeed. The only time in my life that three empty cabs in a row have passed me by was when I was trying to hail them while standing with my then-boyfriend, who was black (and still is, no doubt). I felt deeply ashamed on behalf of my beloved city. Huh.
Yes, Aaron clarified the point exactly–it’s the “white as norm” viewpoint that’s the problem. (I have a friend who is a sociology major and she’s always good at making me see the world in new, paranoia-inducing ways.) Also, most people (at least the people I know) who begin a statement “I saw this black guy at the grocery store” are mentioning his race because they’re going to follow up with some sort of mildly racist comment.
A lot of people were puzzled by Neil Gaiman’s book “Anansi Boys” because he didn’t specify that the main character was black. He said he was being true to his main character, who would obviously see the world from a black point of view. However, all the white people in the book are identified as being white. 🙂
I wonder what stories the taxi drivers in New york tell themselves and each other about black people. why ever wouldn’t they want the custom of people who happen to be black, regardless of their financial situation?
i’ve never been to new york, so maybe the reasons (or rather ‘reasons’) are well known, but to me it’s puzzling. aren’t the taxi drivers mostly from abroad as well? is it a pride thing, a control thing, a weird superstition? do any of you know of any research into this?
and please excuse me if i sound dumb, but i’ve really been wondering about this ever since justine posted her story.
I agree with Scott Westerfeld that history matters, and with Angry Black Woman that power matters. This is why white-towards-minorities racism has more impact, and is more important, than any minorities-towards-whites or minorities-towards-other-minorites racism. Similarly, female-towards-males sexism/misogyny has less impact than male-towards-female sexism/misandry.
I just want to add that it is true minorities can be virulantly racist and prejudiced too, esp. towards _other_ minorities, or within their own race.
As a child, I used to believe that in China or Japan, there was no racism because the entire country is more homogenous in skin tone. Not so – the Chinese can differentiate, sometimes with a glance, your ancestry based on what region of the country you are from, and some regions have more power/cachet than others, particularly the dominant Han region. Not everyone behaves like a jerk about these distinctions, or even sees them, but that is true here in the States as well.
People all over the globe have absorbed the “paler is better” meme. I am Asian and my parents, and my father especially, is ridiculously racist (calling certain races closer to monkeys, etc.), though you would never know it from his public speech. You never know someone until you know them at home.
Another interesting thing is that my parents always told me explicitly, while I was growing up, that Asian was Best but their actions and other subtle cues indicated that subconsciously and implicitly they believed White was Best. My 2 siblings have agreed with me on this – the public valuation system vs. the true, internal one.
My parents are the immigrant generation and suffered quite a bit from racism themselves. But it didn’t diminish their own racism.
Oh yeah, my post above is directed to marrije to explain my perspective on the issue she/he raises, and also to Corey to say, yes, the oppressed groups are not pure and free of same human vices that plague their oppressors.
The caveat, as others have pointed out, that the same type of vice working in both the oppressed and oppressor groups does not play out to be the same thing within culture and society.
In some cases, the minority groups duplicate or take on the values of the oppressor class, reinforcing the dominant structure. Sometimes, a member of a minority group will “return” racism by giving the the oppressors a taste of their own medicine, within the extent of their power. However, these incidents of “reverse racism”” these will generally not change the domininant structure, thus I agree with Scott W’s characterization that they are trivial.
It is possible to be a minority and:
(1) display racism towards other minorities,
(2) do or say something to reinforce the white-is-best structure,
(3) display racism towards whites,
(4) express the idea that your own race is superior to all others, and
(5) publicly express race-neutral sentiments,
all within the same day, without feeling too much mental conflict unless that person chooses to think more about it.