So I know that I already posted earlier today and am potentially breaking the blogging etiquette of letting readers keep up with you, but tough. Work is a wonderful place to remind you of all the things that happen in society, that much is for sure. So today I came across a particularly blatant social issue, racial profiling.
Let me set the scene for you.... Every once in awhile the parking garages get an email with pictures and names of wanted criminals, people to look out for and when we see them we are to call the authorities. Earlier this week we got one such email, with the pictures of a black man and a white woman, we're told they are drug dealers.
So today, a coworker of mine called 911 to notify them that he had seen the man in the picture. Now this would be perfectly legit if it had been true. The man had a patient visitor pass (meaning he is a direct relative of a patient and has parking privileges). These passes have the name of the person parking as well as the patient, and the names were not the same. So this man who is coming to the hospital to provide support for his sick loved one was about to have a really bad day. Essentially the only crime this man had committed was being black in the United States.
When I confronted the coworker about the situation he expressed no remorse. He said that first of all he had to racial profile, secondly that to him all black people looked the same. My coworker is a middle-class, middle-aged, white man. I was dumbstruck. I asked him if he had seen a brunette woman (the woman in the picture was white and had brunette hair) if he would call the cops on her because all brunettes look the same. He chuckled and said "Of course not!" and walked back to his booth.
I've heard this sentiment before... "Oh, all those Asians look the same!" or the assumption that all brown people are Mexican. But every time I hear it, I'm as dumbfounded as I was previously. This is systematic racism at it's best, and it's rampant within our society.
The only reason anyone would think that an entire group of people who share a skin pigment look the same is because they don't care to actually look at them as individuals. The people who say these things are those who don't take the time to get to know people of color, who don't take time to appreciate other cultures. This is a dangerous slope to be on. When we generalize who people are based solely on how much melanin they have, we fall into the hands of harsh stereotypes and prejudices.
All blacks are on welfare and in gangs, selling drugs. All brown people are illegal aliens. All Asians are really good at math and can't drive. All white people are rich and have morals.
When people tell me they aren't racist, I often chuckle. I'm not saying that racism is funny, it's just so ingrained into our society and how we are raised that it would be highly unlikely for anyone not to harbor even the faintest racist tendencies. Like when my coworker told me he wasn't racist, I couldn't help but laugh because he doesn't realize how embedded his racism is, it's natural and normal to him. When you can't tell that one person doesn't look identical to the next solely because they don't share your same skin tone, chances are you've got some racism deep down in your gut, the result of living in a racist society that likes to pretend its not.
Saying "I'm not racist!" and then talking about how all the Mexicans are stealing our jobs is a contradiction in the simplest of terms. Saying you're not racist but then the only people you will talk to are people who share your same skin town is a contradiction. When someone isn't racist they don't care what color a person is when they talk to them, they don't assume they're going to steal their purse because of their race, they don't make hefty generalizations, and they take strides to learn about others' experiences. Now a lot of this isn't just racism, it's classism and sexism and all other sorts of isms intertwined into the scenarios as well.
As a society we need to be better about realizing that racism is still alive and well, and just saying that you're not racist doesn't make it true. It's time we start doing some real soul searching and call each other out on things that embody this culture of racism in a means of progressing our nation to a truly racist free state. And I want to make it clear that I'm not just pegging this on white people, people of all races generalize and discriminate against each other. I've had black friends talk about those damn Mexicans, and Asian friends talk about those poor, unintellectual blacks. I've even heard people of their own races generalizing themselves. We need to work together to combat this. Acknowledge that everyone plays into this and that the solution is not simply one sided.
We need to see people as individuals, not as overgeneralized groups of people. I can guarantee that there countless people that are exceptions to these stereotypical boxes we put them in, but we'd never know it unless we didn't assume. Who knows, the person you've been so sure was stealing your jobs also happens to be a US citizen and makes an excellent friend. Don't be so quick to judge.
Racial profiling is a way of incriminating an entire group of people for the crimes of one. If you take nothing else from this, just remember to treat everyone as individuals. Think of that poor man getting pulled over and needlessly questioned after a traumatic day at the hospital solely because someone assumed he dealt drugs because he was black. We're not all the same, and we should start reflecting that in how we view one another.
Peace, Love, and Social Clarity,
Rae
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