Have I experienced racism?

I was asked by @ithinkican in this post if I had experienced racism. Here is his actual question.

I commented at length and he recommend I post it as a separate post.

I will add to it a little bit so it is something new as well.

I experienced what people call racism in an area where it existed in 1974 or 75 when I was young and still lived in the Fort Worth, Texas area. I am white skinned though I have a lot of native american heritage (Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee) mixed with Germanic, Irish, Scotish, English, Black Dutch, and Swede. So I am a melting pot.

I got yelled at by my grandmother for playing with some black kids down the street. We were having a grand ol' time. My mother was very much a hippie and in her "Peace, Love, and Flower Power" stage so she told me in private that it was okay. I remember neighborhoods that were predominantly black that if you were white and went into them you would very likely get beat up, but I was too young for that.

My mother was also friends with the author that wrote the book "Black Like Me", which was required reading at my high school. It is ironic that he thought I was a beautiful child according to my mother and she actually has a portrait of me painted by that author.

Source: The Telegraph

I moved to Colorado. Most of it I was pretty remote and it wasn't racism that I encountered but more cowboys vs the long hairs. Bigotry will find a way to surface somewhere. People like to group themselves up then find a group that is different to attack.

As I got older and moved to Denver as a young father. I rode the bus a lot and I had some black people call me White Cracker and things like that. Which I ignored.

I also worked at Kryptonics which made Rollerblade Wheels to support my family in our cockroach infested appartment that had a broken elevator, and most of my neighbors were Mexicans and played Cuchero music most of the day and early into the night.

At Kryptonics it was 90% mexican. The supervisor of the machine I worked on did not even speak english. He gave orders through some sub-ordinates. They would ask the white women that worked there Quanto, and they called one guy Pero all of the time. They were insulting people regularly. I took it as an opportunity to learn spanish. I became pretty skilled at the bad kind. I know all kinds of insults as I learned them as they used them on people. Calling people dogs, asking women "how much for your hole?" and all kinds of things like that on a regular basis.

At lunch it wasn't uncommon for someone to back a car up near a door and open a trunk and have it full of car stereos and ask if anyone wanted one.

That was a brief work experience of only a couple of months. It did permanently damage my lungs some working there.

Later on in life I actually got jobs related to my skills. I have worked somewhere that we needed to hire someone, and they said they could only hire a minority because they needed to meet a quota.

I worked at IBM and my direct manager was Black and was a great guy.

I worked at Pearson and my manager when I left was a Black person and I recommended another Black co-worker be promoted to management.

MY POINT has never been that racism doesn't exist.

MY POINT is that you CANNOT defeat racism by being racist.

If a white person treats you poorly, beats you up, won't hire you due to your race, or calls you names then THAT person is a racist.

You would rightly have a grudge and problem with HIM.

If you however, then create a law or movement that impacts all WHITE people, even those like me that did nothing to you, and even support you, then that makes you the racist.

You cannot beat racism by being racist.

If you say things like "White Power" or "Black Power" or anything like that then you are promoting racism.

It will not end...

Generations ago (yes that long) it was common for Black people to get put down and called Nigger and other things like that. It was acceptable and it was WRONG.

They also had white people in makeup playing roles of black people, asian/chinese people, and native americans rather than allowing those people to play their own roles. That was racism.

Source: Atlanta Black Star

Source: indianz.com

It is known by people who were fans of Bruce Lee like I am that he came up with the idea for the TV Series Kung Fu and they cast David Caradine as Kane in the series. Why? They almost didn't let Bruce Lee play Kato in the Green Hornet prior to that simply because he was Chinese.

That ended in the late 60s and early 70s.

It was wrong and it stopped. Now we actually have cases where a TV Series about vikings is called "not diverse" enough so they add more black people. It doesn't matter that it is a historical story and black people didn't really make sense in the context of the story. In fact, diversity is such an issue in many cases that we do have TV series that are almost 100% black... with a very rare white person. You don't hear people shouting for diversity there.

There are scholarships and schools for black people. There are no such things for white people. (nor do I think there should be)


I added some quick search results above. Now I am going to search for the same thing for Whites.


Those are some examples of where the concept of White Privilege is flipped on its head. White Privilege does exist in SOME places in the U.S. Yet, in this regard of scholarships and schools Black Privilege of this kind is available across the nation.

Now it is okay for black people to call me White Cracker or anything else derogatory and get away with it. They even call each other Nigger and think it is fine. If a white person calls them that though there will be hell to pay. I don't call people derogatory names anyway... I think it is stupid. Yet there is a lot of hypocrisy and RACISM there.

You cannot end anything by being the thing you are seeking to end.

Racism does not end if blacks are treated special and given rights that no one else has. Racism does not end if whites are treated special and given rights that no one else has.

I can tell you I've never lived anywhere that had White Privilege. I know there are places like that, but the entire country is not that way. Some places are, and others are not.

Yet these movements have an impact on places that did not have racism. The actions happening today are INCREASING racism they are not helping stop it.

In my high school I only had two black students. They were treated like rock stars. :)

Perhaps that was racism, but they definitely were benefiting from it and they were not asking for it. Instead of people attacking them for being different they instead thought they were pretty cool for being different. This was in rural Colorado.

The racism I've heard in Colorado is primarily against Mexicans. A lot of "they are taking our jobs" talk. There is some truth to that. I guarantee you that the majority of the workers at Kryptonics likely were not here legally.

Back then there was a lot of work though. This was the MID to LATE 90s.

One thing I do know though is that the words politicians say are meaningless. What they say does not tell you what they are going to DO. I am more concerned with what they DO.

I am not going to get worked up over what they MIGHT DO. I don't believe in convicting someone before they've actually done the crime.

And in case you missed it... I didn't vote for Trump or Hillary. I just am really tired of the hypocrisy and hate over imagined horrors that haven't happened yet. When they happen... that is when you have something to complain about... that is when you potentially have the ammunition required for an impeachment.

Without those things you have nothing but words....

Here was my initial reply to his suggestion... then I thought he was right.

Hehe... I really don't like to kick this stuff up. I'd rather write about positive things. It is just I see so many people emotionally reacting to words when NOTHING has happened yet. It is really no different than a child being afraid of the monster under the bed. It is our imagination. It is guessing.

When TRUMP actually does something (which he cannot until after January 20th) that I can bitch about then I will. Yet I don't believe in prophets, and I do not trust the words a politician says to be an accurate representation of what they actually do. This means I don't know shit about what Trump will do. I can guess. I can let my imagination go and think up nightmares. I can let my imagination go and dream up rainbows and pots of gold.

All I want people to realize is that at the moment that is all it is... our imaginations.

People are calling other people names, calling for action, rioting, and doing all kinds of other stupid things over IMAGINED NIGHTMARES that haven't happened.

They are lighting the house on fire in hopes they can get the monster under the bed.