Racist

Well, I reckon I’m finally a “racist”.

I suppose I always have been – not in any hateful sense, but in an awareness that races are different. They have to be, else we could have no concept of “race”. I read “White Men Can’t Run” in Runner’s World back in the 90’s; yep, almost all of the greatest sprinters were of West African stock, and almost all of the greatest distance runners were East African.

Folks were furious with the magazine for printing that article. I just laughed at the furious folks.

But now we have this.

This morning, I was at the Wave, and saw a skinny tall black young man in the basketball gym. This isn’t an oddity – it’s a rarity. I don’t know that I’ve seen ten black folks in Whitefish in the five years that I’ve lived here.

But today, I saw him differently.

Nowadays, black people are supposed to hate white people. Apparently, I have something called “white privilege” that is the reason that they aren’t happy. And they are mad at us about it. And, even if that’s not the case, I’m being told, over and over again, that it ought to be.

This little girl wasn’t born walking down the street looking angry and holding up a fist. Somebody has told her to do that – that she ought to do that.

Now, I was home in Alabama in May and June, and ran into black folks everywhere – just like I always did, growing up there – and everything was pleasant and hunky-dory. I have no idea why that’s the case there, but not elsewhere. Could be because we’ve all been living together there for decades. We went through New Orleans when we left there, and – after some initial caution, because this was as the riots were starting up all over – got along with folks there just fine.

But, soon after, we spent an overnight in Los Angeles, and it seems that the block folks we ran into there were angry. Many of them were wearing those black and yellow shirts, and scowling. Scowling everywhere. Eyes cast around, arms crossed, looking for folks to scowl at.

Since then, we’ve been back here in Montana, and assaulted on television (which is interesting, because the only thing we watch on television is college football) by angry crowds with T-shirts emblazoned with angry mottoes.

So, after years of just seeing black folks and saying “Mornin’!”, when I saw this young man today, I looked at him cautiously. I saw this in myself, and so, later, when we were both in the lobby – only us, and passing – I put on a pleasant face and tried to catch his eye for a greeting, and he kept looking away.

But the fact that, after six decades of just being pleasant with folks, I found myself being cautious because of a possible outburst or scowl – means that I’m acting differently around this man, because of his race. It wasn’t a change in opinion; it’s a change in attitude.

I don’t know what those folks who taught this little girl to glare and raise an angry fist intended. But this is a result.