What do you do when people spout racist drivel?/comments;rather long

Thu Feb 6 19:16:59 UTC 2003

> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "heiditandy" <heidit at n...> 
> wrote:
> > In perfect synchronicity with the Main List discussion of the
> > correlation between racist words and being evil, I found today's 
> > Carolyn Hax column in the Washington Post
> > (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26878-
> > 2003Feb4.html) to
> > be particularly interesting and somewhat on topic there, but I 
> > have a feeling it would fall off topic very quickly, so while 
> > I'll give the link there, I'm also putting it up for discussion 
> > here: 

[snip--I read the column in the Philadelphia Inquirer and thought it 
was very interesting]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "dradamsapple 
<dradamsapple at y...>" <dradamsapple at y...> wrote:

> Oh, Heidi,
> I think you've opened up a beaker of flesh-eating slugs . . .
> 
> I decided to pop in to give you a couple of thoughts; one point of 
> view, is that of a loving daughter of a very bigoted, imigrant, 
> much older, father.  My father came to the US in the late 50's 
> from Italy. [snip] Yet, till the day he died, you could not have 
> an intelligent discussion with him about anything remotely 
> political.  His thoughts on being Black, Jewish or on Mussolini 
> (he thought Mussolini was the greatest thing since sliced bread) 
> were just abhorrable (again, spelling?).  You would think someone 
> with his experiences would be a little more sympathetic, but no.   

My father, born in New Haven in 1918 and raised by a single mother, 
was similar to yours in some ways, but even more of a contradiction, 
I think.  He went to a high school that had a lot of Italian and 
Portuguese students, as well as a number of black students.  And yet 
during my lifetime I heard him say many things stereotyping people 
of Italian and Portuguese ethnicity and folks who are black.  He was 
also in India during WWII and terribly impressed by Gandhi, chalking 
it up as a highlight of his life that he saw Gandhi in a procession 
in Calcutta.  And when King started his passive resistance movement 
in the South, my dad thought it was stupid that a lot of people 
still didn't budge on their old prejudices.  (He was also prejudiced 
against Southerners--how's that for irony?)

Largely, my dad's bigotry took the form of stereotyping people.  He 
thought everyone should have the same civil rights, but he would 
make statements about what things Italians do or are good at, or 
black folks, or Asian folks, etc.  He would say many admiring things 
about various ethnic groups, but it was completely lost on him that 
he was stereotyping.  I think he thought he was very liberal and 
progressive, and in many ways he was, especially for the time in 
which he was born.  But he just didn't get the thing about not 
stereotyping people, even if you're saying something complimentary 
about a group as a whole.  The problem is you CAN'T just label any 
group with a blanket statement--good or bad--without getting into 
trouble.  Just because a person is black or gay or Italian or Jewish 
or Republican doesn't mean you can make sweeping statements about 
who they are and what they're like.

As someone who was raised by a single mother (his dad died when he 
was only two, because of the influenza epidemic of 1920, a smaller 
one than the 1918 epidemic, not that that was any comfort to my 
grandfather), you'd think he also would have been upset when others 
make blanket statements about kids who grow up with just moms.  The 
trouble was, for my dad and his older brother, it really was hard.  
They had nothing, not even their own bedrooms because their mother 
ran a boarding house and they needed to rent all of the rooms to 
Yale students to make as much money as possible, especially during 
the Depression.  My dad, his brother and their mother slept on 
couches in the living room.  

As a result, he thought that all kids should grow up with two 
parents no matter what you had to do to secure that, and 
consequently forced one of my sisters into an unhappy and unwanted 
marriage when she became pregnant at nineteen.  His personal 
experience of being the kid raised by the single mom who had to 
really struggle colored his views about this forever.  I suspect 
that some really bigoted folks have had one bad experience, or know 
someone with one really bad experience, and they are incapable of 
extrapolating and saying, "Well, all folks who are 
black/French/Lutheran/Libertarians probably aren't like that."  I 
think people have to be taught as kids to be flexible that way and 
not pigeonhole or stereotype people; it's much harder to change when 
you're older.  If there's one thing I've learned is that bigotry is 
learned behavior.  Kids don't start off thinking this way; they 
model what they see adults doing.

> One other instance of *rude remarks* comes to mind when I worked 
> for the Blood Donor program of a major hospital.  Some of the male 
> donors (mind you, I  could count them on two fingers) would make 
> remarks about the apparent sexual attractiveness of some of my 
> fellow co-workeres (female).  An obvious case of sexual 
> harrassment?  I thought so.  I finally said something to my 
> supervisor, who informed me that she would keep it in mind, but 
> that this was a rather delicate subject as these people were here 
> volunteering there time and their blood (literally).  What's a 
> *good* employee to do?  

That IS a delicate situation.  If colleagues were doing this and it 
went unchecked, it would constitute a hostile work environment.  
When I worked waiting tables in college I encountered this problem 
with some of my customers from time to time, and the real difficulty 
with this situation was that I was relying upon them for my income--
I only made about $15 a week apart from my tips.  My tips were life 
to me.  You're relying upon the generosity of people who are letting 
you open up a vein and take some of their blood, which will be life 
to someone else.  I'm not sure what to say about this except that 
it's good that, despite being boors, these people at least have the 
decency to give blood.  Sometimes customers would harrass me, I'd 
take it for the sake of a tip, and then STILL not get a decent 
reward for my forbearance.  

--Barb

(Who is pro-mushroom <g>)

http:/groups.yahoo.com/group/Psychic_Serpent
http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Barb