Racist America

This post will be discussing my own personal experiences with racism in America, along with some general theory. Any names used will be changed.

Largely speaking I am a white American. I have some Native American and who knows what else from my Creole side, but if you were to look at me, you'd say I was a white guy. I also have red hair, which is celebrated in some cultured, and discriminated against in others.

To start off my story, let me begin with my childhood. I grew up going to very mixed ethnicity schools, but I was one of the very few ginger kids. So rather than picking on someone for being Black or Asian or Hispanic, they picked on me because I had red hair. It didn't help matters that I was already a very creative yet disconnected kid. I liked living in my dream worlds, because in there I had friends and adventures, rather than just getting beaten up a lot.

Then when I hit puberty I was introduced to my most hated anti-Ginger ethnic slur.
"Fire Crotch".

Firstly, very vulgar.
Secondly, when a kid is already experiencing the discomfort that is puberty, why go the extra mile to point out to them that their genital area is a different color than everyone else's?

It was more singling me out for something I had no control over. Numerous boys my age bullying me and trying to force me to pull down my pants to show off my different colored pubic hair.

Rather unpleasant.
I endured it for awhile, but then fortunately I hit my growth spurt early and people stopped trying to bully me.

But then comes my encounter with unintentionally being on the giving end of racism.
When I was in Junior High it was still during the days of hazing and casual violence, so a regular tradition amongst my male peers was "birthday punches". One solid, but not overly painful punch to the arm for every year in your new age. You'd walk around with a bruise on your arm for the rest of the day, but otherwise good-natured ribbing.

When it was my turn I ran for a bit, but eventually they caught me and I took my punches.
But important to the story is that most of my friends at this time were black. My friend Mark and I were both interested in rap culture and had just ended up associating with the Black clique in our school. So we were the two token white kids in a otherwise dark-skinned friend's circle. We didn't mind, they were our friends, we never considered it to be an issue.
They liked the same music as us and we all got along, race didn't make a difference.

Then came the day of Chris's birthday. He was one of our black friends and when it was his turn he also decided to run. Mark and I were the two fastest guys in the group so we gave chase, the rest of the group cheered us on.
Chris sprinted all the way across campus but Mark and I eventually caught him. We gave him his birthday punches and walked away, we considered the scene to be over and we went on with our morning.

What we didn't know was that apparently our school was also home to some white-supremacists.
They saw two white guys chase down and punch a black guy, and they took it as an excuse to get in on the action.
After Mark and I left they beat Chris brutally. I saw him later and his face was bruised and purple, his lip was cut open. It was horrible.

And I had the horrifying realization.
This was my fault.

My inattention to my surroundings led my friend to being savagely beaten by opportunist assholes. I didn't have the common sense to make sure I was seen as his friend and not as his attacker. He knew we didn't intend for this to happen, but that didn't change the fact that it happened. Chris was forced by campus authorities to point out who had been the people who chased him. Not who were the people who beat him, but who was it that incited the violence.

And that was me, and Mark.
Mark served a week of study hall during Christmas break, I had some family event I had to attend during that time so my punishment was delayed until after. When we came back campus authorities had forgotten about me and I never ended up serving my punishment.

But even without it, we already lost what was really important to us. We lost our friends.
Our circle of friends knew that we didn't intend to cause all of those problems, they had even cheered us on at the beginning, but now we were branded on campus as the racist guys who beat up that black kid.

It took the rest of the year of us telling the white supremacists to go fuck themselves and behaving as best as we could before people were able to look us in the eye again without flinching.

Our old friends couldn't remain connected to us, it made them a target.

We never did get back the closeness that we had with them, even after we salvaged our reputations.

More importantly, we unintentionally had led our friend Chris to be forced to have the memory of being beaten because of the color of his skin.

As a guy who was beaten because the color of his hair, I hate that I had anything to do with that.


As I got older things largely improved. My friends circle was made up of multiple ethnic groups, and none of us considered it to be an issue. Hell, we hardly even discussed it. Any discussion of it was usually just making fun of eachother's culture, not race, not skin tone, just culture. I'd be made fun of for Irish music and Shamrocks, and in return I'd poke fun of my hispanic friends for Mariachi music.

Half the time the jokes didn't even make sense. We used to refer to my friend Tony as the "Cuban Love Machine" even though I don't think he's even Cuban.

It was during this time that I realized; Racism is not inherent. It is a state of mind.
It can be taught to a child, or it can be decided upon during life, but a person without outside influence will not consider someone to be automatically superior or inferior to another based on their skin tone or hair color.

Because really, they are just minor adaptations for climate. Dark-skinned people are adjusted for warmer weather, light-skinned people are adjusted for colder weather. Red-haired people are adjusted for extremely cold weather and very little sunlight.

But these are all minor adaptations, they don't make us superior intellectually, spiritually, or emotionally.
Nor do they make anyone inferior.

I get sun burned during a full moon (Yes I'm that pale), how the hell is this supposed to imply that I am somehow superior to someone with dark skin who doesn't burn as easily?

It doesn't.

And violence towards someone because of something they have no control over is absolutely disgusting.

Attacking someone because they are black, female, gay, etc. These are all bullshit excuses for someone who really just wants to hurt people. They want a target that they can get away with bullying.

Well fuck that, I'd much rather kick a dude's ass for being a racist shithead than for what continent his ancestors came from.


Last anecdote:
Also during my Junior High years, for awhile I kept running afoul of a hispanic kid who was really intently of the belief that he was a gang member. Our city has had precisely zero gang activity in the past 30 years, so it was all for show. But he really wanted to make a name for himself, so he kept trying to pick a fight with me.

This was after my growth spurt so this guy would have had a very hard time beating me in a one-on-one fight, so he kept trying to convince his buddies to gang up on me.
I just told him that they were welcome to do that if they didn't think he had the balls to fight me on his own.
They never did try to fight me. The lead guy tried a couple times, but I was much bigger than him so I just deflected him away and moved on with my day.

One particular day he was ranting about how the white people had invaded California and taken it away from his ancestors and how awful we are for doing that. He stepped up to me and said something to the effect of "Why don't you just get off my land White-Boy?!"

To which I replied:
"How many generations has your family been in California?"

He smirked, kicked his head back and said "Three Motherfucker!" Clearly impressed with himself.

I just chuckled at him.
And said:
"Well, my family has been in California for five generations. Why don't You get off My land?"

He looked affronted, then stormed off. He never said anything like that to me again.

And it's actually true. I've had ancestors in California for five generations. My family first entered America in the 1500's, before this was even a country. Our most recent immigration, I.E. the most recent blood relatives to enter the country, was in 1890.

My family has been here for a long fucking time.

And that's not even counting my Native American ancestors.

So from my perspective, most Americans are "Immigrants". The vast majority of Americans have immigrated to this country more recently than my family did.

So none of you get to give immigrants shit before I do.

Furthermore, despite the fact that my family has been here for a long time, we did originally come from somewhere else. We're all immigrants from somewhere, no-one gets to claim moral authority because their ancestors came here slightly before someone else's ancestors.

From the perspective of the Native population (who also immigrated here, albeit a much longer time ago) all of us are foreigners who arrived about the same time.

It's a stupid bullshit argument, no-one has the moral right to anything on this planet, everyone was an immigrant from somewhere. I may have ancestors from Britain, but their Ancestors came from France and Norway and Germany. The British Isles changed hands dozens of times. The Celts, Romans, Saxons, Anglos, Vikings, etc. So claiming you're from "Pure English Stock" is basically saying that your ancestors got conquered and intermarried with their conquerors a lot.

Not exactly bragging rights.

Be proud of what you do, not where you came from. It's just a place to hang your hat. It's especially pointless if neither you nor anyone you know ever actually hung their hat there. I can't have any personal pride in something my ancestors did back in Ireland.
I wasn't there, nor were any of my surviving relatives. It's amusing to note where we came from, but it is of no importance.

What matters is what we do now, not the color of our skin or where our ancestors came from. We must define ourselves by what we do, and a good start would be for us to stop with all the bullshit about "Race".

Heads up everyone, here's some shocking news:

We're all the same race. Homo Sapien. We're not even different enough to denote a sub-species.

Get over it and stop being idiotic towards eachother.