LOL! If you don't think black people judge white people because of their color, I have a thing or two to talk to you about
I think
all people judge others on things like their color, their upbringing, their money (or lack there of), their appearance, weight, clothing choices, etc. ALL people. This is just not "whites against blacks" stuff.
If I want to get uncomfortable and honest, I constantly judge people. Just today (in my own mind, not out loud):
Why is she letting her gut hang out of those pants?
His teeth are so gross, why is he driving that nice car instead of using that money to fix his teeth?
Why is this homeless person going in and out of the bathroom at Starbucks?
So there. Color had nothing to do with all of my petty assumptions this morning. Perhaps I am just not a very good person. Maybe I was in a bad mood, because many mornings, I don't even notice a single soul. I just go about my day. But, yes. I do judge others.
We are human. I think we are
ALL programmed to judge, or at the very least, make assumptions about other people's differences.
I think, when the judgements are based on something like your sex, your religion, or your skin colour, it wears you down after awhile.
I've had a number of negative experiences around race that have stuck in my head. These are the things on which I base my judgments of the impact of racial inequality in North America...
1. Being the only little white girl in my New Jersey school didn't bother me much. I didn't care that people pulled my hair or stared into my eyes and said they were weird. But when a friend yelled at me from the window of the school bus that we couldn't be friends any more because she didn't "play with white girls", that hurt. Then there was the time the lady at the museum gift shop counter looked at my mum and me, looked at the black family at the end of the counter, and walked over to serve them... and then told us the shop was closed. The museum sent me some plastic animals as an apology, after my mum wrote a letter of complaint.
2. Moving to Canada, I can't believe how white everyone is! Talking to other recent immigrants I realize that I've got an advantage. I don't wear my outsider status on my skin. I blend in easily. I belong, in a way that I never belonged in my home town.
3. Accompanying my mum to a class reunion in Texas. First day, and we're all going back and forth to our cars in the hotel parking lot, getting various items. None of us were hassled by hotel security, except for a classmate of my mum's (a senior army officer) and his teenage son. They were black. The boy got to watch his dad shouted at, not allowed to show ID and thrown down over the hood of his car and frisked. The hotel never apologized to them, saying they "looked suspicious" (dressed in suit and tie) and their security were just doing their job. Later that week that boy and I went to a water park - no problem, though we thought it was weird he was the only black person there. Then we went to Six Flags, where I got screamed at and menaced by a group of black teenage girls, for the crime of being a white girl out with a black boy. We were both quite scared.
4. High school, and my friends are getting their driver's licenses. The only black girl in our class says to us, grinning, "So, how many time have YOU been pulled over by the cops?" We looked at her confused, "Never?" She lost her smile, "What do you mean, never? I've been pulled over three times this fall." We assured her we weren't lying; we'd never been stopped by the cops, ever. She said the cops were always polite and just wanted to see her license and registration, but then she said, unhappily, "Is it because I'm black?" It occurred to me then that these days when someone singles me out (versus back when I lived in NJ), I never have to ask myself if it's because I'm white.
5. Here on the DisBoards, someone posts that he's sure he's being repeatedly tagged to walk through the metal detectors because he's a brown person. Quite a few people (including myself) tell him he's probably wrong, since many of us get repeatedly tagged for the metal detectors and we're not all brown people. However, it's entirely reasonable of him to suspect that, and I know it's got to feel pretty awful to always have to wonder if it's your skin colour that's making people treat you differently. When I get tagged at the entrance to the parks, I know it's not because I'm white.
Yes, we judge each other on colour, and we need to stop. There's nothing wrong with thinking, "Why is she letting her gut hang out of those pants?" but there IS something very wrong with thinking, "Ugh, black women (or white women)! They're slovenly. They don't care about their appearance. Look at the way her gut hangs out of her pants! Typical." And if you allow these thoughts to affect the way you treat someone (ie, "I'm not going to waste my time serving that woman. I know her kind - she's probably on welfare and can't be bothered to tip me, anyway), that's even worse.
We need to work harder on respecting the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings, even as we naturally can't help thinking, "His teeth are gross, he should get them fixed instead of spending all his money on that new car!" (You're right, he probably should, and it's got nothing to do with his race or sex or religion or anything else.
) Also, that possibly-homeless person would worry me, too. Is he sick? Is he doing something dodgy in there? Either way, I sure don't want to share a bathroom with him! But that doesn't mean I'll be rude to him if our paths do cross, and I'll try to keep an open mind about who he might really be.
