I have seen prejudice and racism and seen how easy it would be to let it take hold in my own life. The key is to put yourself in the shoes of the other with their own background and not your own.

Racism is the prejudiced view and treatment of others based upon their race (or assumed race based upon the color of their skin) with respect to one’s own cultural norms and views of acceptable behavior (including speech patterns) . That view and treatment is not dependent upon power or the color of the racist’s skin. Racist acts cause racism in many people who would not have been racist if they weren’t accosted by a racist from a different race. It can also be taught by people of the same race, including their parents and peers.

Example: when I was a little in a poor fatherless white family in Oregon, my mother’s best friend Robbie’s son was my best friend. Robbie was a poor black woman whose husband had deserted her just like my father had deserted us. As we saw it, we were the same in every way. I learned years later that my friend was of a different race, but as a toddler growing up to age 5, I didn’t even know anything about race. When I was 5, we moved to the Washington-Idaho border. Shortly after that, a black family moved into the town where I went to school (7 miles away from our home). There was a lot of conflict between that family and some white troublemakers. I didn’t realize it was about their race and assumed, based upon the white troublemakers’ history that they were just causing trouble again and it was so bad that the new family moved away. (It was probably racism, but I can’t know for sure). That was the only family I saw that was black until I went to high school. There was a very popular talk guy on the varsity basketball team who had a beautiful little sister (I had a crush on her). Their father was black and their mother was a Filipina. Larry wore his hair in an enormous Afro and his nickname was “niggar”. When I joined the basketball team, I asked his name. He said, “you can call me Niggar”. I said, what’s your real name and he said, it’s Larry, but I prefer to be called “Niggar” by my friends. At one of our away games, after being called Niggar by many of his teammates, one of the guys from the other team called him a dumb Niggar. He went from being that happy guy to an enraged person who wanted to kill the white guy that called him that. After he beat the crap out of that guy and our team was fighting their team, I asked him, “what happened?” He said m, that guy called me a Niggar. I said, “you said you liked that nickname, how come that made you so angry when fouls an pushing and playing dirty never bothers you and you are called that every day”. He made it clear it was because when his friends use the name, “they don’t mean it as an insult, but when that guy used it, he meant it to cut me down more than anything else could. So I had to cut him down”. When I went to college in Kentucky, in one of my first classes, the prof said to the class, “raise your hand if you’re prejudiced”. A couple white kids raised their hands but the rest of the people didn’t. I thought about the question and decided that I wasn’t prejudiced and didn’t want to be. (By that time I had figured out what racial prejudice was and how ugly it was, so I wanted nothing to do with it. ). The prof promptly said, “all you white people are liars”. I thought, “that sounds like a prejudiced (and therefore wrong) thing to say. He went on to prove that even if we didn’t know we were prejudiced against black people, we were. Any argument was used against the white person ti prove they were prejudiced. One person said,”my best friend is black; I’m not prejudiced”. The prof said, that proves you’re prejudiced, because you identify him as and singled him out as black”. The black students agreed and lapped this up like a cat with catnip” many of them started in attacking anything a white person said to disprove the claim that all white people are prejudiced. The discussion went on stating that no black people are prejudiced or racist. Even when I argued that prejudiced means to prejudge before having the facts and and prejudice against or for somebody based upon their race was racist and as such that kind of blanket statement was prejudiced and racist, the prof stated it wasn’t racist if it were said by a black person, because black people can't be racist.

Another experience was when I worked for an IBM call center. After a 2 year hiring freeze, IBM had rolled out beta tested software to 1,500 Denny’s restaurants and 13 analysts (instead of 40, because we had lost so many during the hiring freeze) had to handle all the calls that came in. We couldn’t keep up. We were in South Carolina, but all the analysts we still had were white men and women. We were expected to handle all the calls from those restaurants on all the old systems from the other 6 concepts and thousands of stores (like el Pollo loco, Hardy’s, etc) at the rate of 21 per analyst per shift and since we weren’t trained on the new system we were only expected to handle 7 calls per analyst per shift. Needless to say we fell woefully behind and customer ratings plummeted due to the wait times. Management couldn’t push us any harder and they couldn’t find qualified analysts, so they decided to hire 40 unskilled laborers to take calls and enter them into the database and allow the analysts to start picking them off as quickly as we could. 100% of the new hires were black because there was a push for equity. We were actively hiring based upon race and sexual preference (in the mid 90s.).

I was a shift leader and worked on the floor in one of the cubicles with analysts and data entry personnel. I was cycling through 3-5 calls, talking the managers through fixing the problems with their computers and placing them on hold while I moved to the next one and listening to our side of calls as they were being entered into the database so I could assess if I could tell them quick fixes to some of the problems so we could close out calls faster. One of the data entry ladies in the cubicle next to mine was having difficulty understanding the manager of an el Pollo loco restaurant and she said something to him like “I caint unnustin a word you sayin, you needa talk betta English or just go back where you come from” and then she hung up on him/her. I quickly placed on hold the call I was dealing with and jumped up and said, “we don’t tolerate racism like that here!” My customer and alm the other customers on the phone with analysts and data entry personnel around you could hear what you just said.” She looked shocked that she was being called out for racism and said, “I ain’t racist, I’m black!” I told her that also was a racist statement and it needed to stop now!” Then I went back to my calls.

I married a woman from a different race and language group from my own (she is also fluent in English with a slight accent). I have seen her discriminated against many times, where I was treated with respect and dignity a minute later. (I let that person have it when my wife wasn’t around and threatened to have her fired if I ever saw anything line that again from her.
I have seen some cases where people were just rude and obnoxious to her, but that had nothing to do with racism.(they acted that way to people of all races). My wife had become so sensitive to dealing with racist behavior that she mistook that rude and obnoxious behavior toward her as just another racist act. This is common amongst people who have suffered the attacks of racists for too long. I try to help her distinguish the difference, but both things hurt. The only value of distinguishing them is that it can help you not to prejudge people based upon other people.

Although “white fragility” is utter racist nonsense and borderline hates speech (if the word “hates speech” means anything), racism (not systemic racism) does still exist. However, it is not innate, it is learned; and often developed by people of one race noticing culturally accepted norms and common behaviors in people of a different race that are unacceptable to the person viewing those norms or behaviors. It requires introspection by all of us to ensure we judge the individual based upon their own behavior and not our previous experiences with people that look like them and then to try to understand why they believe their behavior is acceptable and determine if it can be accepted.

I’ve seen a lot of prejudice and racism coming from people of all races. Racism breeds racism. Love and acceptance breeds love and acceptance.