CW: A bunch of stuff about race and the n-word
My first real exposure to racism was when I got to hang out at the bowling alley where my mother worked and my father bowled on Friday nights. Muhammad Ali was fighting that night, and it was on TV in the bar. My mother took me over at one point and let me hear the people in the bar yelling at the screen, wanting Ali to lose. They were calling him the n-word and hoping he would get injured or even killed.
BTW, let's not dwell on the fact that my mother was fine with letting her 9 year old son hang out in a bar watching a boxing match with a bunch of drunks! It was very rare that I got to go with them, even though I pestered them all the time. I was an old soul and it was a different time…
So anyway, when the fight was over, she took me back into the bar and pointed out that all the people who hated Ali were now collecting their money because they had bet on him. She told me they were so racist and hateful that these people would rather lose their bets if it meant that a black man got put in his place, and how wrong that was. My mom was wise like that.
The thing is, those people felt perfectly comfortable yelling "nigger" in a crowded bar. Even worse, there were plenty of black people in the bar who had no choice but to ignore it. It would get very dangerous for them very quickly if they said anything. It was just the way that it was. Crowds were mixed in Jersey, and there were plenty of white people who thought of some of the black people who frequented the same places as them as friends, or at least acquaintances. They made allowances for certain black people they deemed worthy. I’ve met a lot of white people who were always saying "I don't have a problem with black people, I just hate niggers," which is pretty fucking racist and vile.
So anyway, we moved to Texas in 1976, and they took racism to new levels. Mexicans were wetbacks or beaners, and the contempt for them was palpable. Most of the people there wanted nothing to do with them. The way they treated black people was jaw dropping. They still called them "boy" and acted like they were still slaves. I never really had any interaction with any Mexican people the whole time I was there because white people and Mexican people just didn’t mix. In my young mind, I guess I assumed that was all well and good, because most of the Texans I encountered told me horror stories about how terrible they were.
The only thing was, I had met them, I just didn’t know it. I had a couple of friends in school that were first or second generation Mexican, and I didn’t really know it at the time. Due to my upbringing in New Jersey, I just thought of them as Puerto Rican. They certainly weren’t these lazy and dangerous Mexicans I had been hearing so much about!
I even had a good friend in 7th grade, a girl I developed a crush on. I found out she was Mexican, and that she liked me too, and I was shocked at both revelations. I found it out at the very end of the school year though, and then we moved and I never saw her again. Oh well, young love.
What was sad about the whole thing is that for a while in my young mind, racist people had somehow trained me to think that Mexican people weren’t human on some level, to the point that I didn’t recognize them as such when I met them. I thought it was normal to use slurs like “wetback,” at least until my parents heard me say it and put a stop to it. The whole time we all regularly went to restaurants and ate Mexican food with our Texan friends. Many of them were truly nice and caring people, they were just racist and didn’t even know it.
My father worked construction in Texas, and one Saturday he stopped over at his foreman's house. They were going to go somewhere, but his boss told him they couldn't leave until his boys got there. My father assumed he meant his sons, but then a pickup truck full of black guys from the jobsite pulled up.
They hopped out and the guy gave them instructions on mowing his lawn and tending his flowers and shrubs. They all answered "yes Mr Banks" to all his directions, then set off to his garage for the lawn mower and rakes and whatnot.
When my father got in the truck and they pulled away, he said to his boss "those are all guys from the job. You pay them to do yard work on the weekends?"
His boss just laughed and said "Pay them?" He was incredulous.
"Nah, they're my boys. They know that if they don't come take care of my lawn on weekends there'll be no work for them during the week!"
We had a neighbor who lived catty cornered to us who was black, and he would sometimes hang out and talk to my dad over the fence. He was a really smart guy, and I liked him. I started to notice that whenever any of the other neighbors were out, he would slip into this kind of Stepin Fetchit persona and voice. He would dumb down everything he said.
My father noticed too, and one day when they were alone, he asked him about it. The guy seemed embarrassed, but said that he did it because most white people didn't like a black guy who seemed smart, and it could get him beat up or worse.
I thought of that story years later in the 90s. I worked with a black guy who was a mechanic, and being service manager I had to enter his service tickets in the computer and track what he did for billing. I noticed that whenever I sent him out on a service call, his service sheet was almost illegible. I asked him about it, and he laughed. He explained that he was left handed, but when he was out on a strange job with white guys he didn't know, he would write with his right hand. That way people would think "poor dumb nigger, he can barely write." I was appalled, but he just chuckled and said he was used to it. It was better that they thought he was stupid than risk getting them defensive or confrontational.
One night, my family got a taste of how it felt to be on the other end of it. Back east, as Italians, we never really faced any racism or hardship because of our ethnicity. We were privileged. So imagine my father’s shock when we went out to eat at a Texas restaurant and the menu had something called a “wop salad.” My father called the waitress over and asked what the hell that was, and she explained matter-of-factly that it was “ … a wop salad. You know, like an Italian, a wop.”
My father got us all up and we left the restaurant in a huff, but even that was privileged because a lot of minorities would probably just wind up rolling their eyes and adding it to the long list of offensive shit they had to deal with. Speaking up might turn violent for them.
So anyway, the reason I started this story off by mentioning that I moved to that small-town in Pennsylvania in 1979 is because that year a black family also moved in down the block. I think they were the first black family in town.
So a bunch of us kids were playing, and an argument broke out. One of the white kids wound up calling one of the black kids the n-word, and the black kid threw a rock at him. The whole block was in turmoil. The next day it was decided that the local head of police, Chief Snyder, would come up and talk to the kids. There were only two police officers in town to rule over, but Snyder had that redneck southern police officer act down. He was a real "big fish, little pond" guy, full of self importance.
So anyway, he calmly explained what was wrong about the whole incident while seated with the kids, with the parents in a circle around them.
"First off," he began, talking to the black child, "you can't throw rocks at people. It's dangerous."
"But he called me a name," the child explained.
"Yes, and that comes to you," Snyder said, turning to face the white boy. "You can't just call a nigger a nigger!"
Some of the parents gasped, and then Chief Snyder realized what he said, and got a little flustered.
"Well, you know what I mean!"
And like that, the little chat session was over, and the black family moved away soon afterward, and everything went back to normal.
There's still a lot of racism around here. I remember hearing some guy my father knew talking about how he was proud that his town still didn't have any black people living in it. That was in this century.
My town has Dorney Park, a huge amusement and water park that draws huge crowds. There are plenty of white people around here who will not go there anymore because it's "full of blacks and Puerto Ricans, and I'm not getting in the same water with them." They feel the same way about a nearby lake, saying it's ruined by all the "animals" that go there now.
I still know a bunch of black people who slip into a different persona when other white people are around. Code-switching is prevalent.
The funny thing is, if you asked a lot of these white people, they would tell you they aren't racist at all. They will point out that they know some minorities personally. One guy told me he couldn't possibly be racist because he got a Puerto Rican girl pregnant and has a mixed race kid. Keep in mind that he also has a swastika tattooed on his chest. They truly don't get it at all.
So I still think we have a long way to go before racism isn't a real problem. I like to think positively, but I don't think it will ever go away. Being white, other white people will still say things that shock me, without a hint of embarrassment or shame. They think we're in the same club, but we're not. I'm still flabbergasted whenever I hear it, and I speak up and call it out when I do, but I'm not sure that I change many minds.
I guess I just have to remember that they aren't really racist. They don't have a problem with black people, they just hate niggers…
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