I Admit it, I'm Racist

When I was in high school, I decided it would be neat to attend a Native American celebration being held at my school. I went alone and as I walked into the gym, a strange feeling of being different swept over me. The room was full of people who all looked alike, but not like me. No one was rude or mean to me, yet I felt out of place. For the first time in my life, I felt (just a small bit) what minorities must feel just about every day.

I grew up in an area where blacks were almost non-existent. I couldn't understand the racism that I heard about in other places in the country. But then I realized I had deep seeded feelings about a group of people I grew up around, the Native Americans, in our area. I had bad experiences as a child, things I saw, and things I experienced first hand. There was the girl from the reservation who beat my head against the bus window for standing up to her as she taunted my friend. There was the group of kids who made fun of the way the white kids

dressed as we walked into the school each day. Even though my elementary school had at least 1/3 tribal kids, I never really knew any of them as friends and so the bad experiences overwhelmed my memories. It's not right and it's not fair, but it happens.

If a woman is abused by her father or her boyfriend, she becomes fearful of all men, even though she knows that not all men are evil. We do it everyday. We make judgments of the people in Walmart for the way they dress or look. We see people who look different and decide that different must mean "not as good." We see one homeless man going into a gas station to buy beer and decide that all beggars are alcoholics. We are treated badly by a couple of people and then lump everyone who looks like them together, "all cops are crooked." I don't think there is a way to stop our brains from making these judgments, it's how many generations ago, we kept ourselves safe.

Lucky for me, I moved to many different parts of the country and had many great experiences with people of all colors and races. It is so much easier to see a person without their color when you know her as a person, not a "type."

I'd like to say I don't make these quick judgments, but I'm sure I do. I think it's normal, but the question is: What do I do with those judgments? Am I able to sort through them and keep the ones that make sense and disregard those that label an entire group? That's the question. Am I racist? Are you?