Little Miss Racist
20 November 2002

Just yesterday I was playing "Follow the Links" and ended up spending half an hour reading a new website. It was one of those sites that's smartly written and makes me feel just a little bit like an idiot. And hey, they're all from Austin! So, imagine my surprise when the very next day, they linked me. That made me feel important, and just a little bit less like an idiot, until I let myself get paranoid that maybe they were making fun of me. Little advice: if someone offers you the chance to live inside my head for a day, don't take it.

And since I'm on a linking spree, I should mention that I was also catching up on my friend Lee's journal. If you read no other entry, at least read this one, which broke my heart as I laughed, and made me love her even more.

And then, just when you thought I was done linking, here's another one. For those of you old-school readers, who miss the forum and wish I wasn't such a failed dot com, Michelle of Michelle Said/ Michelle's Mom Said has a journal now. If she didn't want that link up there, she'll have to pay me to take it down.

So, just as I predicted, the Spinning Into Plates discussion turned into quite the heated debate last night. Nothing like four white people sitting around arguing about racism to prove the play's point, I guess.

I'm not sure what the solution is, if racism is a societal problem or an individual problem. Obviously nothing will change without individual perceptions of people changing, if our instinctual decisions about people change, then maybe our dependence on fear-based stereotypes will change. This play pointed out that as long as you saw a difference in people, or held some people up to a higher standard, or idolized them/ glorified them / excused them for what they looked like, then you were still being a racist, still judging people on race. The glorification of a culture that's different from yours is still a racist attitude.

I'm not sure how realistic it is to say I'm not supposed to notice when someone is different from me. That's what humans do. We categorize. We like to do that. We like socks in a socks drawer and underwear in a different drawer. We like to arrange and put things in places where they "go." We look at someone and make something like, a million categorial decisions immediately, and with those decisions come assumptions we make based on previous experience, nature and nurture. Would it make sense to stop doing that? Is that the only way to achieve racial harmony? Ignoring our differences? Blurring them out?

I don't think noticing the differences in people makes you a racist. Deciding to not like or approve of someone because of those differences makes you a racist and a bigot. It's only once you feel superior to a group of people based off of a superficial quality that you become a racist. Right?

Am I a racist for not noticing when someone is Hispanic? Or not realizing when someone is Jewish? Or not being able to tell immediately if someone is Chinese or Vietnamese? Am I a racist for describing someone as "Black?" Am I a racist when I notice differences? When I impersonate a speech pattern? Am I only a racist if I did it maliciously? Because I think people assume you're a racist pretty quickly as well, particularly if you're from the South. People assume I'm going to have small-minded views when they hear I'm from Texas. In fact, I usually have to add the disclaimer that I'm from Austin, that it's okay if I'm from the liberal town. I leave out the fact that I went to high school in Houston, since that's where people assume the racists live.

And yeah, racists do live there. They lived in my neighborhood. They went to my school. But they weren't who I hung out with.

Now I'm just making excuses for myself again. I'm a white person arguing with myself about racism. What is my point here?

I hate feeling like I should feel ashamed of myself for noticing the differences in people. I hate feeling so super-sensitive about race, so much so that...

Here's a confession, since I'm just now talking to myself and I'm pretending all of you won't read this, because talking about this stuff makes me feel ashamed of myself. I hate feeling guilty over something I'm not. Isn't this ridiculous? I'm upset with myself for feeling like I could so easily be a racist, with the way I grew up and the things that happened to me. I'm upset because I'm worried somehow deep down I am racist, and I just don't know it yet. That I met enough people, and experienced enough hatred and small-mindedness, that in the end, deep inside of me, I just am and I'm ignoring it.

The facts:

I once went to a school that was 99% black. My best friend was black. I never noticed that she didn't have any black friends. I never noticed that most of my classes didn't have black students in them, even though almost the entire school was black. I didn't notice that I was being segregated until I had "Missisippi History" class, a core class that everyone in the school had to take. That was when I was in a classroom with gang members, with 17-year old seventh-graders, with boys who had guns in the front of their pants, in a classroom with kids who said they didn't know how to read. Does it make me a racist for noticing the dangerous kids? Does it make me a racist for not liking that class? Does it make me a racist for not trying to help, for not putting a stop to it, or saying something? Does it make me a racist for thanking fate every day for getting me the hell out of Mississippi before I started high school?

I had a black teacher in elementary school give all of the white kids in her class lower grades than her black students. My mother had to go to the school to prove what the teacher was doing to get my grade raised to what I had earned. She admitted it, and raised my grade. She didn't like a friend of mine who had done a project called "Rich Man, Poor Man," using photographs she found in magazines. She got an F, since every "Rich Man" was white, and every "Poor Man" was black. She didn't even know she had done that, as she was twelve at the time, and using the only magazines available. She wasn't making a political statement; she was doing a photo project on opposites. Is she a racist, or was she made into one? And if she fit the profile, if the project was unintentionally racist, did that make her a latent racist? A psychological racist? A subconscious racist? You see what I mean?

I have only had one person ever threaten to shoot me in the face. She was a black woman who accused me of being a racist because I wouldn't let her stay in her hotel room. I was told to kick her out because she was smokng crack in the hotel room. She said she was going to get her gun and shoot me in the face for being a racist. Because of this, I have a predjudice against crackheads that want to shoot me in the face. I'm still not a racist. Whitey Crackhead can bite my ass, too.

Excuse me. Crackhead Cracker. That's the better joke. I'm slipping because this topic makes me uncomfortable. If something makes you uncomfortable, I think you should just do it until it doesn't anymore. Just push past it. Get over the fear. Do it. So...

The group of friends I had in high school splintered one year when half of them decided to become racist skinhead punks. The rest, who were Sharps, didn't expect that to happen. These kids decided to hate groups of people they had, admittedly, never met. Did it make me a racist for not kicking their asses? Did it make me a racist because I had previously been friends with some of them? Guilt by association?

But none of these things made me dislike a group of people. I don't get nervous in a crowd of another race. I'm pretty good at understanding accents. Is that like me saying, "Some of my best friends are black?"

My least favorite excuse is someone saying, "I know it isn't right to think this way, but I'm sorry. That's just the way I was raised."

Blaming your parents for why you're a racist is even more cowardly than just coming out and saying, "I don't like the way Mexicans smell." Don't blame your parents, admit that it's wrong, and then embrace the ignorance. Talk about asinine.

I went to UT during the Hopwood case, and I worked for the development office at the time, so I spoke with many alumni concening racial quotas. I had never heard of racial quotas before, and at twenty, I was shocked to hear of such a thing (okay, so I was a little sheltered in my small town high school). I immediately thought that it would perpetuate stereotypes, and instead of merit-based academic achievement, people would assume that a student got in the school because of what he or she looked like. A co-worker challenged how I felt, calling me a racist, saying he wants to go to this school no matter what it took. I told him that I, too, wanted to go to the school, but there weren't any scholarships for me because on paper it would seem that I could afford to go, even though the truth was my dad was out of work and in the hospital with cancer. I'm still paying back the loans I had to take out. Does that make me a racist, that I want the same opportunities as everyone else?

Moving to Los Angeles, I was shocked at how many Mexican jokes I heard everywhere. Suddenly everyone hates Mexicans. I certainly didn't see much of that in Texas, where I was exposed to so many more Mexican people every day. The majority of my friends were Mexican. I couldn't believe that at twenty-five I was being exposed to a new kind of racism, for a different group of people entirely.

So now there's racial profiling, racial quotas, "reverse racism," and every kind of label to say, "People look different from each other and we've got to figure out how to deal with that." Does it make me a racist for knowing this? Acknowledging this? Does it make me a racist simply for pointing it out? For writing these words down? For telling you that I worry that somehow I judge people?

I do judge people. Of course I do. I have to. It's a survival tactic. But I'm not going to judge someone on their skin, but I will judge them on the way that they look. Are they looking shifty? Pissed off? Tense? Do they look like they want to yell? Does she look like she's peed on herself? Does he look like he's drunk? I will stay away from these people. I'm a lookist.

I'm doing it, aren't I? I'm giving the, "I'm sorry, that's just who I am" excuse. You see? I don't know the solution. I was raised to think that everyone was equal, and that's what I always believed. We all are born with the same ability to dream. We aren't all born with the same level of motivation. We are all born with the ability to learn. We aren't all born with the same drive, the same skills, or the same opportunites. Sure, life isn't fair. But if I was one of the lucky ones, how humble do I need to be? If I'm confident in myself, if I give back to my community, if I work as hard as I can every day, is that enough? Will the fact that I'm a good person mean that I'm working towards a change?

In a problem as big as this, do I even make a difference? Do I matter? And is the real problem how self-centered I'm being about this entire thing? It's all about how I worry about how I might really feel, or I worry about what someone else could conclude about me. How shallow. How circular. It's as exhausting as it is obnoxious.

I wouldn't trade my childhood because it made me who I am, and I'm grateful to have been exposed to as many cultures as I have. But I'd like to be less sensitive about everything. I'd like it to be like it was in kindergarten, where everyone eventually got a turn and was line leader, and you never knew that anybody was different. You didn't understand differences. You didn't even know the differences in boys and girls. They were either friends or not friends.

Look at that schmaltzy-ass sentence I just wrote. I need to stop right here before someone breaks out a stick of incense.

I love you. There. I said it. That's what this was all leading up to. I love you, and nothing that has happened to me, or to you, is going to change that fact. You can hate me all you want. I still love you for being you. I think you're awesome. Amazing. Everything you do is infinitely interesting to me because you're living a life I'll never have. I can't wait to hear how it turns out for you. I'm glad we aren't all the same person. But man, if you're stinky, I'm not sitting by you on the shuttle, okay? Nothing personal.

Kumba-fucking-ya, y'all.