We are a racist country with a culture of tolerating it. This can’t be news to anyone.
It’s just that now it has become all right to flaunt it, post it, scream it and be proud of that racism.
I remember my mother’s father, who died in 1958, telling my ma, “When your children are grown there will no longer be racism in this country.” If only…
Often throughout my life I have looked back on that statement and wondered what gave him such hope? In my lifetime I have seen little evidence that racism will disappear.
I know in many ways things have changed. People of color can no longer be legally restricted in where they live, eat, pray or who they date or marry. I see multi-racial couples in ads on the television. I see blended children. But I know Americans are often not comfortable with those who do not look, think or act just like they do.
A country that built its wealth on slavery can’t really be expected to change. Americans like their wealth and how they get it is often not important.
Today, we are no longer legally allowed to own another human but slavery isn’t dead. Low wage slaves exist in every industry. We knowingly encourage Mexican farmworkers to come here illegally to work for sub-par wages in jobs no “real American” will take.
Yet, when a politician wants votes he or she can always rage with the scare tactic of racism. We know that the majority of people in this country who are here illegally are here because their visas expired. Rather than return home they simply stayed. Yet, the only people being chased by ICE are people of color.
Today in the American South blacks still live in fear of the white man. Lynching still exists. Voter suppression is encouraged. When traveling through the South I approached a door to a grocery store at about the same time as a black man. He stepped back to allow me to enter first. He wasn’t being polite, he was being safe. After all I am a light-skinned Latino and as far as he knew I might have been white. To this day that experience still saddens me.
I wonder what my grandfather would say if he were alive today. Would he be surprised that we as a country haven’t made the progress he assumed we would?
When I was a freshman in college, one of a handful of people of color in an all white school, I listened to an Asian woman say that racism will continue until we are all inter-married and our children are all mixed in color. Maybe she was right. Maybe if we no longer had “pure” white skinned people we wouldn’t have racism. But I doubt it. The Irish were hated when they first arrived here, can’t imagine a whiter race.
I think if we were all blended maybe we wouldn’t have racism based on skin color but we would find some other way to discriminate. Maybe we are already there because it seems like poor people are now held in great disdain. Maybe it’s just what humans do; try to make themselves feel better by putting down someone else.
If you are uncomfortable around a person because of the color of their skin, or their wealth status, or their religion or ethnicity, you need to ask yourself, why? We are all the same under the skin. We all want food, shelter, and love. Try to remember that the next time you see someone who makes you uncomfortable.
Gabriel A. Fraire has been a writer more than 45 years. He can be reached at gabrielfraire.com.
