I know that I’m racist. I live in St. Louis. Black men walking down my street alone after dusk in low-slung jeans scare me, so I don’t look them in the eye as they pass.
These men that I can’t look at may respond by feeling angry, nonchalant or challenged. It is hurtful to these men and to those who love them; I know because my friends share their feelings about the response to their own brothers and sons that I’m describing. I am afraid of these African American men because of the color of their skin.
To be fair, there are other factors contributing to my decision not to look this black man in the eye. They are the neighborhood that I live in (higher than average petty crime statistics), our city’s racial tension and my fear of rape coupled with a lack of any self-defense or martial arts skills. But all that is partly – or all – my fault. I moved to my neighborhood in order to “whiten” it up and show that I’m not afraid. In more politically correct terms, I moved to my neighborhood to show that I care about the social health of this inner-city hood.
Rumors of African American male bias, namely a prurient fascination with Asian women do not help to ease my anxiety about walking down the street after dusk.
African American men are not the only subjects of my bias. Nay, German men alarm me, too: especially the kind who are NOT strait-laced, who engage in easy conversation with me and do not seem ashamed of their heavy accents. The German Dude (or Gentleman, whichever you prefer), sitting next to me on this flight is wearing a heavy gold chain necklace, business-casual attire in a general ‘taupe’ theme, a rainbow-colored friendship bracelet and a notebook bound in Native American-themed brocade and leather. (“They’re crazy about Native Americans, those Germans, didn’t you know that?”)
My biases elicit reactions from my own superego: “You’re turning into a stiff old lady, girlie. You need to forget those rumors and chill the f*ck out!”
I say that German Dude (I’d be offended if he referred to me as ‘Chinese Chick,’ but not if he called me Chinese Woman) wears his notebook because it’s an accessory, just like the iPod on a jogger, the miniature poodle on a sexually extroverted blond celebrity or a blond celebrity on an aging (Jack Nicholson) actor who hasn’t been handsome since he was 35. In any case, I’m not going to engage in any conversation with German Dude on this plane, no matter how many times he unfolds his long legs so that I can take a piss or stretch my legs; no matter how polite and friendly he is toward me.
Stereotype: Germans are sex maniacs. They watch porn on their regular TVs. They watch naked news! (So do we – on network television. I’m also biased against sexuality in the marketplace because I don’t want to be objectified all the live-long day.) Let me say that again: I DO NOT WANT TO BE OBJECTIFIED ALL THE LIVE-LONG DAY. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE OTHER WOMEN, OR OTHER PEOPLE, FOR THAT MATTER, OBJECTIFIED ON THE STREET, IN THE MEDIA, OR ANYWHERE. IT CAUSES ME TO RANT. Ahem.
I’m racist. At least I can admit to being racist. Can we say that I’m racist? Even if I don’t actually believe that the stereotypes are true, I find the possibility of those stereotypes being true enough that they govern my actions. If they govern my actions, I’d say that I’m racist. Isn’t racism what causes white and whitish people to move out of cities when their housing and schools become less segregated? Isn’t it the reason that black boys in run-down cars get arrested on something – anything – if they happen to stray into a cop’s zone at the wrong time? It’s the reason that people think I must be honest, mathematically gifted and polite. What can I say? I was born with “the look.”
I’ve come close to giving my number to a black man who seemed friendly enough – and one who I’d only met a few minutes ago (I don’t even do this with white men and I don’t generally date Asians). But the rumors about African American men being selfish and requiring high maintenance (God forbid; it’s hard enough to manage my own maintenance) kept my impulses in check. That is, I didn’t even bother to think about the underlying parental racism that has prevented me from meeting many African American folks, especially men, in the first place. I just stopped in my tracks.
As kids, I met people through my parents. Then I met more people using the skills (and unconsciously, the preferences) that I learned while socializing with people chosen by my parents. Logically, racism can be passed down through generations very easily, without malice or forethought.
On the other hand, what I’ve just described is my own conscious decision. I can’t use the word “conscientious” to describe my avoidance-racism because that would turn my assumption that racism is bad on its head. No, conscientiousness has a positive connotation. One is conscientious about brushing her teeth, doing her laundry and changing her bedsheets regularly. One is not said to conscientiously avoid eye contact with strangers who happen to be African American men, unless one can safely assume that making eye contact with any stranger is bad, or that making eye contact with a stranger who happens to be an African American is bad.
Yet I would bet my left eye that many people in this City of St. Louis would say just that it is conscientious of them not to make eye contact with unfamiliar African American men. (Let’s not mention the fact that to most, African American men are utterly unfamiliar.)
One thing I know is that the American Public has been studiously avoiding the topic of race conflict. The Doctrine of Political Correctness has even made it conscientious of us to avoid the topic of race. Our discourse – all discourse- is stunted by the Doctrine.
I’m just beginning to learn my place in the spectrum of racist disorder. Like autism, this disorder has degrees. My guess is that on the continuity of racist individuals, I’m actually sitting at the 25th percentile or lower. Maybe I think too highly of myself. I also think that Missourians have a statewide average of 90th percentile racism. Again, that’s just my guess, but anecdotally, I’d say that 90th is a conservative estimate. New York? New York has false pride. It sits at the 70th percentile. Yes, these calculations have been scientifically produced at my laptop on Open Office Writer.
There you are. I’ve found another group to be biased against – that I am biased against: Missourians. The sheer number of Missourians, white and black (there aren’t many any other coloreds), who are surprised that I speak flawless (well, native-sounding) English is astonishing. It’s flabbergasting. It’s obnoxious. These people are culturally illiterate. Even worse, they do not appear to reconsider their assumptions once I turn out to have been born here. “Well WHAT ARE YOU?” they ask. “A body-snatcher,” I want to reply. “I’m an alien life form.”
For me, awareness of such backward, nay, RUDE illiteracy translates into fear when I imagine what else Missourians would be surprised by. I’m not an expert eggroll-maker. I don’t kow-tow to all males. (I enjoyed watching The Joy Luck Club, but I also detested it for its simplification of the enormously instricate process known as Chinese-American assimilation. Why don’t we fear assimilation the way that Conservative Jews do? Alas, there lies a story for another day.)
I hear news of a Missouri State Legislator referring to the Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression” (true story – just last week); and my white friends’ confessions of what racist white people say to them in the grocery store, having assumed that my friends, being white, are also racist. I also look around me and see white neighborhoods (clean, well-maintained, in St. Louis, anyway); and compare them to black neighborhoods in St. Louis. Littered, with boarded up homes and uncut laws, black neighborhoods are being discriminated against by their own municipal system. Some might call me a conspiracy theorist. I say, it’s like pollution, bad schools or payday lenders. We allow them to crowd into poor neighborhoods, but not white ones. How is the lack of other municipal or watchdog activities any different?
In Southern Illinois, people who refer to themselves as “white trash” or “just plan poor as all hell” are physically and psychically similar to St. Louis blacks. They’ve got a high incidence of asthma, pneumonia, lung, liver and ovarian cancer, depression, alcoholism, addiction to smoking and terrible eating habits. Sure, I’m generalizing. People living in poverty have given up hope on losing their addictions, being happy, earning a living wage, becoming healthy, losing weight, living in a home to be proud of or being culturally literate. Those who are not suffering from a complete lack of hope are suffering from the God Delusion, and trample upon those others who haven’t the same deluded sense that “God is fair.” They call on the hopeless to pull themselves up by the bootstraps by accepting Jesus into their hearts.
How do I know so much that I can speak categorically to the plight of Southern Illinois poor white folk, you ask?
I spend more waking hours with poor white folks in Southern Illinois than with any other demographic. Arguably, I spend almost as much time with my privileged, white coworkers (who all live in St. Louis), but I don’t talk to them much. They don’t share their consumption practices, their finances, familial strife, health problems, run-ins with the law (because they don’t have many, and what run-ins they have are corrected by other white lawyers, myself included).
If my coworkers do give up some information about themselves, it is controlled disclosure: image-building. My clients, on the other hand, have less control over when, why, how, and to whom they make these confessions. Theirs is a process of involuntary image-building. It will be used against them throughout their lives. It may be used against them every day.
Maybe the only group that I’m not biased against is the underdogs. My clients don’t blame me for perpetuating their miserable existence, but I do. Don’t argue with me. I may “do good work.” I may earn less than similarly qualified classmates, but I benefit from my position just as any hedge-fund manager or pimp does. I drive a Prius and buy new shoes when I’m upset, instead of falling back on meth, or into the arms of another – or the same – abusive partner, as a client might do. We’re all players. The world’s a stage. Only when someone rips the needle off the record with a decisive snatch will our dance change course.
(I want to be the one to snatch that needle. Even my coworkers, who don’t even know me that well, tell me so. Foolishness, they call it. I’d be happy if anyone else did the snatching. I just don’t see the snatching happening anytime soon. Obama may be the great white (black?) hope for many, but he’s got limited political capital. We all do.)
I’m a racist, a do-gooder with a martyr complex and an Obsessive, hoping for the public airing of racial, gender and sexual grievances. Maybe I should just become a group therapist. Maybe that’s what I started this blog to do.
Update: Just as we landed, German Dude revealed that he is in fact a Croatian socialist living in St. Louis. He’s privileged, but as a foreigner arriving in St. Louis two years ago, he was shocked by the state of our roads, schools, buildings and services. Clayton is what Eastern Europe looks like, he says. They don’t have much money, but tax dollars are funneled into infrastructure so that everybody can be proud of the town that they live in and benefit from the “wealth” of their common goods. (Homesickness perhaps, but genuinely articulated.) He cites to Sweden’s national income cap. I throw him a line about discouraging hard work. Then I describe Berlusconi’s power to let him know that I’m on his side. Socialism isn’t perfect. Berlusconi is just like our moguls. I tell him, in apology, that Americans know that “we” suck. Just look at the movie Wall-E! That was a Disney production and it did well at the theaters! Croatian Socialist Dude loved Wall-E. I’m just glad that my assumptions were not confirmed. My collection of stereotypes has been altered. Maybe it has grown, become more intricate, or maybe it’s shrinking. I think it’s hard to wander about without a box of stereotypes, though. That’s why I don’t think that 100th percentile racists should be struck by lightening. We all have the potential for disabling racist disorder.
Gelya
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