Unfortunately, having gone and read the post, I don't think it will be possible to link the two sets of experiences together, because in this context, misery that arises from institutionalised racism is "real" and misery that arises from kids in a group being horrible to a stranger is "not real." Which is odd, because I just said the same thing twice.
There will be talk of "derailing the discussion." There will be the assumption that because you are the skin colour you are, you as an individual simply could not have suffered one atom as much as someone of a different ethnicity, because you have "white privilege" and that is apparently better than a security blanket. (I'm not saying white privilege doesn't exist--of course it does--but I certainly didn't know much about it when I was being made miserable as a kid, and neither, from the sound of it, did you.) It will be pointed out that nobody tried to set your house on fire, or painted slogans across your door, or pushed excrement through your letterbox. Your experience is therefore trivial, and unrelated, and how dare you bring it up in the context of this serious discussion of racism.
I think your experience (and to a lesser extent mine) shows that racism, and indeed all the other bigotries we live with day to day, are separate manifestations of something far more deeply rooted in our psyche, and that treating them as separate things is treating the symptoms--as long as kids (and adults) can do it to *anyone*, then of course they will do it to brown and black and red people, and old people, and fat people, and people who worship at a different altar, and people who are just different.
What we have are two facts:
1. We all fear and hate the different. 2. We are all different.
If we as human beings can confront those two facts and find a way to overcome the first one, then there is hope...but making laws to protect certain forms of difference, while it's obviously necessary for the well-being of the people being victimised, won't make the problem go away. Not till we see that it happens to all of us, that it is *in* all of us, will we begin to make real progress towards resolving it. Till then, we will just have to go on making more and more laws. And it will keep happening anyway.
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This got long, sorry, and you may prefer to delete it...
Date: 2010-09-20 07:26 am (UTC)There will be talk of "derailing the discussion." There will be the assumption that because you are the skin colour you are, you as an individual simply could not have suffered one atom as much as someone of a different ethnicity, because you have "white privilege" and that is apparently better than a security blanket. (I'm not saying white privilege doesn't exist--of course it does--but I certainly didn't know much about it when I was being made miserable as a kid, and neither, from the sound of it, did you.) It will be pointed out that nobody tried to set your house on fire, or painted slogans across your door, or pushed excrement through your letterbox. Your experience is therefore trivial, and unrelated, and how dare you bring it up in the context of this serious discussion of racism.
I think your experience (and to a lesser extent mine) shows that racism, and indeed all the other bigotries we live with day to day, are separate manifestations of something far more deeply rooted in our psyche, and that treating them as separate things is treating the symptoms--as long as kids (and adults) can do it to *anyone*, then of course they will do it to brown and black and red people, and old people, and fat people, and people who worship at a different altar, and people who are just different.
What we have are two facts:
1. We all fear and hate the different.
2. We are all different.
If we as human beings can confront those two facts and find a way to overcome the first one, then there is hope...but making laws to protect certain forms of difference, while it's obviously necessary for the well-being of the people being victimised, won't make the problem go away. Not till we see that it happens to all of us, that it is *in* all of us, will we begin to make real progress towards resolving it. Till then, we will just have to go on making more and more laws. And it will keep happening anyway.