Racism 101
by Sally K LehmanPublished in The Gresham Outlook
Is there such a thing as a racist bone? You hear the saying a lot - "He didn't have a racist bone in him" - and it's usually associated with someone who has murdered someone else. In all honesty, it's usually associated with some 'white' someone murdering some 'black' someone. So it begs the question - is there a racist bone?
Maybe there's some ultra white bone located deep under the skin. Or maybe it's one of those tiny bones that get lost in the hands and require prospective doctors to use mnemonic devices to remember them all. Maybe, if you believe in the Old Testament, it's the last vestige of the rib Adam gave up to have a bride. Those people for whom this statement is most often attributed are typically male after all.
In my father's family, most of the older men had lots of racist bones in them. They all stood about five feet and four inches tall - they were probably taller at one point, but I met them all rather late in their lives seeing as how they were primarily my grandpa and his brothers. They would take their five feet and four inches, covered with lots of wrinkles and very little hair (unless you were to chance a look at their ears and noses), and they would raise their fist at people of other races and say terrible things to them. They would then sit around and congratulate themselves for their mighty deed of keeping the rest of the family safe as they drank themselves into oblivion while eating potato salad. We didn't actually eat potato salad that often, but this normally would happen at family reunions - a place where I believe there's some sort of law demanding the presence of potato salad.
These were the men that taught my sisters and me to use the 'n-word' when we were young. Our mother taught us to not use that same word in near simultaneous voice, and since she could not only spank us, but could catch us to do so, we listened to her. These were the men who taught us that those 'hippy types' who rode motorcycles and had tattoos were the spawn of Satan Himself. Mom pretty much let us make up our own minds about people as we met them - she even likes my tattoos though she doesn't understand the why behind them.
I understand the concept of Generational Gaps and Learned Behavior. I've taken my Psych 101 class for college already. I understand that my grandpa and his brothers were people, like all of us, with their own foibles and mistakes and errs in judgment. I even, after watching him drink himself to death, still loved Grandpa on the day he died. But I could never come to an understanding about the race-thing.
At some point, did a black man cheat him out of something? On one Tuesday afternoon, did a Latino back his car into Grandpa's and then drive away? Did a group of Hells Angels tear up his farm land one early Spring morning? Did a Native American make eyes at Grandma at the Pendleton Roundup one year?
My sisters and I have seven - count 'em seven - different cultural representations in our blood line. Granted, most of those are from Europe, but not all of them. Added to that, my nephew is half Puerto Rican. My niece is Jewish. Are my grandpa and his brothers turning in their graves right now? Possibly. In all truth, probably.
Me? I'm okay with it. After all, I don't have a racist bone in my body.
copyright 2007 sally k lehman