For the last several posts, with the exception of a couple of Christmas posts, I’ve been writing a lot about Hillary in an attempt to get some information about this woman out to the electorate in the early primary states. As we are now less than 48 hours from the Iowa Caucuses, it’s time to sit back and see what is going to happen. Therefore, I’m going to lay off Hillary for the next couple of days, and tackle a lighter issue: Racism.
Three times in my life I have been accused of being a racist. The last two have come in the last couple of months during discussions on race on this and other sites, and they weren’t direct accusations at me per se, but rather accusations that as a white male I am racist due to the mere fact that I am white (compounded by the fact that I’m a male). The funny thing is, I think that that kind of comment is one of the most racist things I have ever heard in my life.
The only time I was every directly accused of being a racist came about 10 or 12 years ago when I was a manager at Kinko’s. I had a coworker – lets call her Sheryl (we’ll call her that because here name was Sheryl) – And Sheryl was a very weak coworker. She was slow, she had attendance issues, and she was basically a poor worker. And when I wrote Sheryl up for her performance issues, she accused me of discriminating against her because she was black. See, I didn’t mention earlier that Sheryl was black, because it doesn’t matter that she was.
To make a long story short, my district manager conducted a full investigation, interviewed every coworker, and they all told him the same thing: Sheryl was a lousy worker. Now if you’re expecting me to go into a rant about how African Americans use the race card to yada, yada, yada, it ain’t gonna happen. This was a situation where one women pulled a stunt, and her actions are the actions of her alone. Heck, it may not have even been a stunt; for all I know Sheryl truly believed she was being discriminated against. However, for that to be the case she would have to have believed that her performance was solid, and it wasn’t. She truly was a poor performer.
I tell you this to clear the air about who I am and what my personal feelings are regarding race. I do not consider myself a racist, but at the same time you have to define what racism is. To me, a racist is someone who makes an assumption about a person because of their race, and then acts on that assumption, usually in a negative way. I mean, assume that you are a young male of Latin ancestry, and a young women wants to get with you because she wants a “hot Latin lover”. Now this women is acting on a stereotype, but I doubt if you were the young man in question that you would be shouting “Racist”.
Some people say that you can’t be a racist unless you are in a position to cause harm. For example, If I’m a boss and I choose to deny someone a promotion because of their race, then I’m a racist, BUT the immigrant that I deny the promotion to can not be a racist because he holds no “power” over me. I think this kind of thinking is B.S.. Sure, the boss racist can cause more harm because of his position, but what if the boss was Latino and the person denied the promotion was white? Is that any different than if the boss were white and the worker Latino? Of course not. Racism basically exists on two planes: ignorance and hate.
So where is all of this going? Well, dear reader, all of this time I have been arguing that someone can’t be a racist simply because they belong to a group of people (white people, republicans, etc….), well, unless that group is the Klan. And as rare as this is for me to say, I’m going to say it anyhow: I was wrooo…., eh hem, I was wrooooo…... Okay, I was not exactly 100% right. I take it back, I was wrong when I said that racism could not come from membership in a particular group.
And what exactly IS that group? Ah dear reader, for that you will have to tune in tomorrow…..
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