Blog Posting #2

As I think about the talks that we have had on race and how this type of thing has affected my life it feels difficult. As a white man, I don't often notice when the things I do could be considered racially insensitive because I have never really felt discrimination because of my race. I find that my biggest offense is that I tend to generalize far too often. Stereotyping is human nature. We do this naturally to save time when analyzing a new situation. We do it when we aren't dealing with people and we don't think anything of it. I walked into a restaurant and was offered the Cajun special that they were serving. Using background knowledge on the word, Cajun, knowing that it was from Louisiana and that there tends to be a large amount of spice in their dishes I determined that the food must be some sort of spicy dish from Louisiana and politely passed. This went unnoticed by those around me and did not seem racist in the least bit but what if it were a person? If I walked into a restaurant and they said that there would be a Cajun singer playing tonight, it would be racist of me to think that his music would be sub-par because he was most likely a traveling folk singer with French heritage who did not have much education. I understand that such a thought is wrong and damaging to society as a whole especially if you express that opinion openly. In truth, however, those types of thought are entirely natural. The goal should not be to suppress them as they do provide a feeling of security until the point at which you can acquire more information on the individual, but we must ensure that we don't act on these feelings so we don't appear to have racist feelings.

I know there are other issues that are not my largest problem. White privilege is a large problem that hardly notice. I know that I go through life mostly untouched by racism against myself. I noticed an interesting phenomenon in a store the other day. As I was walking out of the store I saw a black man walking through the scanners at the door and they went off. The white lady employee called him back in and looked at his receipt. After checking his bags she found no problem and let him go through. As I went out the same door the security went off again. I turned around to go through the same process but the lady looked at me and said, "You're fine," and waved me on. It was eye opening because it was not at all what I expected. Looking at the two of us, the black man had been wearing a suit and looked like a business man. I was a college student with scruffy facial hair in a t-shirt and shorts with moccasins and socks on my feet. It would have made much more sense to stop me because I looked much more like the type of person who would try to steal something but my whiteness kept me from the same fate that a much more respectable black man suffered.This isn't the only time things like that have happened but half the time I'm not watching closely enough to catch it. Often in video game stores, I watch the salesmen hover around a non-white customer until they leave and completely ignore the white guests no matter how much shadier they look. I even stopped a young white boy from stealing a game because I could tell he seemed nervous and fidgety but the clerks only noticed the homeless-looking man who ended up actually paying for his game.

I am disheartened by what goes on everyday with racism and white privilege but I haven't fully found a way to solve it. I agree that there is less racism but what is left is more subtly and can grow under the radar forever. my thought is that the best way to stop it is to point it out. As a white man, my voice is heard when I speak and I can use that to point out obvious racist practices. I have actually considered setting up live acting projects in stores like the show, What Would you do?, where a black friend and I test for racism in public areas. I hope that with enough peoples' help, we can begin to tear down the last remnants of an older system of discrimination in our country.