General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: As a 67 year old white man, let me address this to my fellow Caucasians: [View all]tblue37
(65,307 posts)in my presence, I look them hard in the eye and say, "I imagine you don't realize that I am black. A lot of us are have light skin because of mixed ancestry, you know."
I am not really black. I am actually a freckled redhead whose paternal grandparents came over from Sicily in the early 20th century, and I have Russian Jewish, Scottish, and Irish forebears on my mother's side. But since I carry pictures of my sister's two black kids in my wallet, I show them pictures of my niece and nephew and say, "Maybe you should be more careful about how you talk about other people." I also carry around pictures of two young adults who were in my home daycare throughout their childhood and still spend a lot of time with me, and I show such people those pictures, too. (They think of me as their other mother, so I don't feel it is entirely a lie to refer to them as members of my family.)
I get a big kick out of the mumbling embarrassment of the jerks who assume that they can safely make racist comments and jokes if they are in a lily white group.
I also like the idea of making them nervous about whether they might at any time be talking to an apparently white person who is actually a person of mixed race who happens to have light skin. That might teach them to refrain from making such comments in some situations. It won't make a difference around people they know well, but at least they might not be spreading their racist poison in groups of people they don't know as well.
I had a student in my class back in 1979 who was so pale skinned and light haired that he made Julian Assange's look like a brunette. But this young man's stepfather, who had been his father since he was about 6 months old, was black, and so were his 4 siblings. He told me once that when he hears someone being racist around him, he just pulls out his wallet and says, "I'd like to show you a picture of my family." He was delighted to discover that we were shutting down loudmouthed jerks in the same way.
Too many people, especially LEOs, still don't seem to realize that black people are not the "other"--they are us. They are our children, our friends, and our families. We feel no solidarity at all with white racists, and we are enraged at the racist police tactics that put our loved ones' lives at risk every time they dare to leave the house.
As a 65-year-old white woman I don't fear the police for myself, but I am always afraid for my relatives and my close friends who could at any time be targeted by the police.