The Long Road Here - Starting to Understand Racial Inequality
Posted: Monday, August 15, 2011
by Bruce Horst
WryteStuff
I'm skipping around in this series, "The Long Road Here." I've predicted 8 installments to this series, but I've been finding it difficult to write my experiences. Frankly, what I've learned along the way can be pretty offensive to people in my past, and I'm reluctant to offend them. For this installment, I'm going to skip forward a few years to something less personal to me.
I really didn't know any minorities growing up, except for a kid our family took in one week every Summer from an organization called the Fresh Air Fund. His name was Raymond Manning, and he was from The Bronx, New York.
My grandmother had an above-ground pool that we would swim in during the Summer, and occasionally we took Raymond to the pool to swim. I had an uncle who would drain the water every time after we left, because Raymond was black. I was always intrigued by this, but I didn't really understand it.
As I got older, I remember asking those around me, if blacks can have a Black History Month, why can't whites have White History Month? This seemed like a legitimate question to me.
When I reached my early 20's I heard Rush Limbaugh in his faux eloquence ask the question, "if we have to pay restitution to blacks to for past discrimination, then how do we know when we've paid them back enough?" I couldn't find fault with this question.
Then there was reverse discrimination. Obviously whites have been discriminated against because of equal opportunity laws. At least that's how it seemed. Every story of descrimination I ever heard was against white people. Because of my very limited exposure to minorities I realized that I didn't have a very good understanding of discrimination against minorities. I did know, however, how main-stream white male conversation typically went when it came to minorities.
In the early 2000's I was spring-boarded into management as the national tech trainer at Best Buy. As part of this, I was required to spend a few weeks in management training, with one week in sensitivity training.
This was an incredible week for me. In hindsight, I see it as a week that I had been longing for most of my life. I remember coming home after late nights and putting my young children to bed, and telling them what I had learned during the day. At the center of this training were the Jane Elliott videos.
Jane Elliott was a 3rd grade teacher in the 1960's. After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she decided to take her students through an exercise to help them understand racial discrimination.
If you haven't seen them, you need to watch these video's on YouTube. In her experiment, she first told her blue-eye'd students that they were superior. They could have a longer recess, and drink at the normal water fountain.
In less than 24 hours, the brown-eye'd students were having trouble paying attention in class. The brown-eye'd students immediately had lower test scores and had behavioral trouble in class.
The next day, Ms. Elliott told her students that there was a mistake. The brown-eye'd student were actually superior to the blue eye'd students. It was immediately obvious the stress that the blue eye'd students were under, and in the next test, their performance was inferior to the brown eye'd students.
This testing method would in no way be acceptable in today's politically-correct world. I can't imagine how teacher Jane Elliott could survive in today's litigious society. Still, her lesson was amazing and it resonated with me.
It helped me understand how minorities have been treated as inferior throughout my lifetime. I found myself asking others how long it would take for a person to recover if the first 10 years of their lives, they were treated as inferior. (The educated answer is that they would never fully recover.)
I now know why there is no White History Month. It's because every other month is White History Month.
I understand now that whatever white discrimination there is, it is minuscule compared to discrimination against minorities.
I've also learned that the perpetrators of crimes often voice their opinions of what is appropriate restitution for their victim. Please excuse my crude example, but it's like a rapist dictating when his rape victim has been adequately compensated and/or treated for being raped. In other words, it's complete crap. When a rape victim has been adequately treated for the trauma that she experienced, it's up to that victim to make the call. The rapist is the absolute last person whose opinion counts.
Recently I heard a story from a friend of mine, who's wife is an elementary school teacher in a part of Houston known for being inhabited by racial minorities. She overheard one of her 7-year-old students talking about what he would do 'when he goes to prison.' This broke my heart. How can we as a society allow any child to assume he or she will end up in prison? I've heard people hint that it's the child's fault that he makes this assumption. In my understanding now, this is kin to blasphemy.
The one week of sensitivity training has had a profound effect on me and my family. It has certainly changed our view on who is being treated unfairly in society, and who is treating others unfairly. This is definately one of the major factors bringing me to where I am today.
I'm no expert in racial descrimination and race-baiting, but I know it when I see it. And I see it frequently.
The Long Road Here: My Influence from the Mennonites
The Long Road to Here - Influence from My Parents
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Top-level comments on this article: (7 total)Thanks for sharing this Bruce. Very insightful and courageous.Thanks Jim.
Great article Bruce. I wasn't raised in Pennsylvania's Alabama but rather in Alabama's Alabama and history tells all of how the racial prejudice was in past years here. I truly am sorry for the reputation built here. I am eternally grateful that my parents did not belong to that majority. I was taught never to be disrespectful to a black person and I never was. Those who have abused those good and humble black people I have known will receive their eternal justice.
I don't completely agree with you on the obligation of restitution however. I have never harmed anyone and I do not feel I owe them anything because I was born into a majority who have caused much harm. I am willing to help anyone when they have need and I have anything I can spare...but what I'm saying is, my personal conscience is clear.
Thanks for sharing this article, it has much that needs to be considered by all.
Thanks Joel. My parents also taught me that I everyone should be treated with respect, regardless of skin color. I should have mentioned that in this article.
Good Article Bruce, maybe you can let our Prime Minister David Cameron know about other your experiences, it seems that he is looking to the States for inspriation after the riots we have had over here. At the moment though it looks like he is taking the "I've got a bigger stick", approach.Unfortunately rioting is the only tool these people feel they have, and the results are horrendous for the rioters themselves. I lived in the H St. area of Washington, D.C. 25 years after Martin Luther King's assassination and there was still little recovery from the damage that was done to their communities during the riots...they were short-sightedly hurting themselves. And the rioting then perpetuates fear..."will this black person be the angry fellow wanting to take out his (deserved) rage--on me?" Bruce, I would love to know your ideas on....What IS a Prime Minister to do....really? And what options do these angry people have to express their grievances?Unfortunately these issues didn't come about overnight, and the rioting is only a symptom of the problems.
In the States, what I see is twofold: 1. Politicians serving only the rich and powerful, leaving minorities without a voice, poor and unemployed. And 2. Politicians using fear-mongering and race-baiting to rally their political base, polarizing the population while demonizing minorities. These trends will take years to reverse after the country decides that they need to be reversed, and so far the USA isn't even close to considering this needs to be reversed. Because of this, I'm afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better.
I'd have to believe that in both the UK and the US, if minorities were given just a small amount of genuine hope that their living conditions will improve, then the rioting will subside. I doubt that politicians on either side of the pond have the will or the imagination to make this happen. Not yet, anyway.
Bruce, I enjoyed reading this article. Thanks for sharing. I, too, can relate to some of your comments and growing up in "Pennsylvania's Alabama." I do hope you know, that things are different here.....perhaps not for the good, but they are getting better. I pride myself in my family's appreciation for ALL people!!Thanks Melanie, your comments mean a lot to me.
I hesitated using that paragraph about Pennsylvania. I didn't mean for it to be derogatory, I wanted to provide context. I know it's an unfair categorization of PA's residents.
You should be proud of your family. Some day I hope to hear your story. It's probably not so different from mine.
FREE at last, free at last, perhaps this is when we find true freedom when we die.
Jeb's daddy who is a black man, and Seth's daddy who is a white man both started farming their own plot of land in the early 1900's. Jeb's daddy was then forced off of his land by the great white establishment under threats of his death and harm to his family which were widely accepted practices at the time. Seth's daddy then purchased the land from the bank for cheap and the spread went on to make their family a fortune. Today Seth's son runs the family farm and Jeb's son works for him as a farm hand. Seth's son owes Jeb's son nothing though because Seth's son never actually physically helped the establishment remove Jeb's grandfather from the property that helped pave the way for his family's fortune..does he?Exactly, David. Yet so many deny that this is what has occurred / is occurring.
Sure miss having you around here, David.
Good article, Bruce. I'm a great believer in take off the skin and we're all the same. I like to judge people on how they value and act, and I couldn't care less about their colour. I was raised this way at home, although what my parents taught and how they acted often didn't gel, but it was partly to do with the times they, themselves, were raised in. What the 'whites' have done to the 'blacks' of Australia was used by the South Africans when they set up their official apartheid state. Not something to be proud of. Our indigenous people still suffer. Unfortunately, we have turned them into disempowered victims, disenfranchised them and treat them kid gloves, which is a form of reverse racism. Most of the discussion we hear over here is about the black American; we rarely hear about the indigenous people. Is this an oversight in general or part of a deliberate governmental/attitudinal policy? All I know is they were moved onto reservations and have gambling casinos. I know little else.
Interesting point, Hannah. Despite having a great-grandfather who was a Sioux indian, today I don't know any indigenous Americans, nor can I recall having ever known any. The majority of them were murdered off years ago, and the rest have been relegated to their reservations.
I understand the 'disempowered victim' threat, and there is a real danger of this occurring. At the same time we have empirical evidence that helping minorities start with equal footing almost always leads to them reaching or exceding the rest of the population economically. It's a matter of if the affirmative action can be done intelligently, though currently there is very little evidence that politicians can do anything in America today that can be described as intelligent.
The biggest problem right now as I see it is that America has many unscrupulous politicians who are willing to use minorities as scapegoats for all our problems. Unfortunately, this has been very effective for them so I don't see the politicians stopping this incredibly evil practice anytime soon. The religious people in our country seem to be the most susceptible to this bigotry, which is really disheartening.
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