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MSD · 05-03-2008, 05:08 PM

I'm going to be 100% honest about this, just make sure you read to the end before you pass judgment or you're going to get the wrong idea. Because of ignorance and unwillingness to give prejudice more than lip service in my education and upbringing, I was taught to be a racist.

I grew up in and still live in a whitewashed rich community. In the 1990 census there were 54000 people and something like 85 black and Hispanic families. I don't think that prejudices ingrained in my thinking are genetic, I think it's years of being taught them. Bridgeport (city that borders our town, one of the poorest cities in the state, next to our rich town) is a dangerous place. To a young mind, it wasn't because of complex socioeconomic factors, gang and drug violence, an underfunded and failing educational system, and the economic collapse of the city. To a young mind, it was because it was full of black people.

My parents are well-adjusted and not outwardly prejudiced and I don't think they realized what living here was teaching me. They told me about equality, living through the civil rights movement, and the golden rule, but I was so sheltered that I didn't really get to experience diversity. They told me that Bridgeport was a dangerous place to be at night. The net result was that I was passively taught that minorities are poor, crime-prone, less educated, and dangerous to me.

I realized just how prejudiced my upbringing taught me to be during my last job at an oil change garage. Peoples' information was right in front of me and I assumed that people from Bridgeport were poorer, I was surprised when a black person drove up in a new BMW or Mercedes, and it didn't help that I, the only person going to college, was the only white person who worked there; seeing fellow employees embody stereotypes that I had been taught (seriously, any given day could have been a cutscene from a GTA game.)

Only in the past few years have I started to fully understand to what extent people are a product of their upbringing, both in the fact that there are people who embody stereotypes and that I have been buying into those stereotypes all my life because effort to teach me otherwise were just a bunch of words not backed up by action. With that understanding, I have consciously made efforts to change the way I think. I still have the occasional gut reaction that takes an extra split second to process because my brain has to go through the "no, that's a prejudice, it's wrong," cycle. Going to a very diverse university has helped me in this process. I may be getting a degree with two majors on it a week from tomorrow, but the more valuable thing I got out of it is the process of unlearning the prejudices I learned as I grew up.

My group of friends (and their friends, and their friends,) at school are the colorblind society that we need to strive for. We crack jokes about race, sexuality, and all sorts of taboo subjects because we've come together to the point that our differences are nothing more than a joke. By joking about it, we devalue the harm that prejudices do to us.

I'm not a racist, but I was for a long time. If/when I have kids, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure they don't have to spend time unlearning things they were taught wrong.

05-03-2008, 05:08 PM	#9 (permalink)
MSD The sky calls to us ... Super Moderator Location: CT	I'm going to be 100% honest about this, just make sure you read to the end before you pass judgment or you're going to get the wrong idea. Because of ignorance and unwillingness to give prejudice more than lip service in my education and upbringing, I was taught to be a racist. I grew up in and still live in a whitewashed rich community. In the 1990 census there were 54000 people and something like 85 black and Hispanic families. I don't think that prejudices ingrained in my thinking are genetic, I think it's years of being taught them. Bridgeport (city that borders our town, one of the poorest cities in the state, next to our rich town) is a dangerous place. To a young mind, it wasn't because of complex socioeconomic factors, gang and drug violence, an underfunded and failing educational system, and the economic collapse of the city. To a young mind, it was because it was full of black people. My parents are well-adjusted and not outwardly prejudiced and I don't think they realized what living here was teaching me. They told me about equality, living through the civil rights movement, and the golden rule, but I was so sheltered that I didn't really get to experience diversity. They told me that Bridgeport was a dangerous place to be at night. The net result was that I was passively taught that minorities are poor, crime-prone, less educated, and dangerous to me. I realized just how prejudiced my upbringing taught me to be during my last job at an oil change garage. Peoples' information was right in front of me and I assumed that people from Bridgeport were poorer, I was surprised when a black person drove up in a new BMW or Mercedes, and it didn't help that I, the only person going to college, was the only white person who worked there; seeing fellow employees embody stereotypes that I had been taught (seriously, any given day could have been a cutscene from a GTA game.) Only in the past few years have I started to fully understand to what extent people are a product of their upbringing, both in the fact that there are people who embody stereotypes and that I have been buying into those stereotypes all my life because effort to teach me otherwise were just a bunch of words not backed up by action. With that understanding, I have consciously made efforts to change the way I think. I still have the occasional gut reaction that takes an extra split second to process because my brain has to go through the "no, that's a prejudice, it's wrong," cycle. Going to a very diverse university has helped me in this process. I may be getting a degree with two majors on it a week from tomorrow, but the more valuable thing I got out of it is the process of unlearning the prejudices I learned as I grew up. My group of friends (and their friends, and their friends,) at school are the colorblind society that we need to strive for. We crack jokes about race, sexuality, and all sorts of taboo subjects because we've come together to the point that our differences are nothing more than a joke. By joking about it, we devalue the harm that prejudices do to us. I'm not a racist, but I was for a long time. If/when I have kids, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure they don't have to spend time unlearning things they were taught wrong.