An ‘everyday’ confrontation with racism

College should teach us practical skills. After three years of higher education I’ve got more… College should teach us practical skills. After three years of higher education I’ve got more book knowledge than I know what to do with.

But recently I found myself in a situation for which my education left me strikingly unprepared.

How should we deal with racists in our daily lives?

I was not raised to instigate arguments. Confrontation is uncomfortable, and I avoid it whenever possible. But when someone comes into my house and hurls racial insults around like they don’t mean anything, my blood boils.

The person in my home was an invited guest. Up until recently I would have even considered him a friend. He has friends who are minorities, and I have never seen Ku Klux Klan regalia hanging in his closet.

But I watched as his baby face curled into a nasty sneer and his easy smile morphed into a look of contempt as he mocked and derided a black television talk show host.

Watching my friend undergo this change, I alternated between a desire to yell at him and a desire to leave the room rather than bear witness to it all.

Yelling, of course, would have been the more satisfying response to his behavior. It would have conveyed my feelings about what he was doing, and out of embarrassment he would probably have shut up.

But I can imagine the discussion that would follow such an outburst.

He’d tell me I was just being politically correct (a term that has become a dirty word on par with the dreaded “liberal”), while I would vainly attempt to defend my position using abstracts.

I’m not a debater, and I didn’t confront him that night for many reasons. Desire not to cause a scene. Uncertainty about his actual motivations (was he a real racist or just a product of our stereotype-laden culture?). A certitude that nothing I could say would change his mind.

I did leave the room when I was afraid steam would come from my ears, but leaving only made me feel like a traitor. Did my silent slink out of the conversation make him think that I agreed with what he said?

Would objecting have changed anything?

I believe in the Kum Ba Yah, make-the-world-a-better-place mentality, but some prejudices are too deep-seated to ever be overcome.

I’ve been there before. My own brother, raised by the same parents who raised me, had his brain kidnapped. He actually believes that the TV show “Martin” is an accurate picture of the lives of black people. I’ve tried every form of lecture and discussion to open his mind, but his ideas are set. Only he can alter them.

I’ve never been a fan of being a missionary. The mindset that “I have seen the light and I will guide you to it” has always seemed heavy-handed and unnecessary. Who’s to say that I shouldn’t just let my friend continue to harbor his un-PC ideas while I sit comfortably on my pedestal of self-righteousness?

I don’t want to do that. And there is certainly nothing comfortable about racial misconceptions, but when minds are shut, there’s often little we on the outside can do to open them.

Realizing that I can’t always change the way people think, especially when their opinions are deeply rooted in society’s age-old misconceptions, was not a pleasant experience.

I’m left, in situations like the one with my friend, to hope that some day he’ll come around and that in the meantime he won’t do any real and lasting damage.

For the near future, I only hope I can find some way to respond to both the outright racist comments and the more subtle, subversive, but equally ignorant messages and attitudes that stereotype and insult.

My friend is only a symptom of a much larger problem. He may not belong to a white supremacist group or espouse epithets, but his hurtful and demeaning stereotyping can be just as painful. I don’t know that it’s a problem that will ever be solved, but we certainly don’t have to sit back and pretend it’s OK.

Next time, I’m going to speak up. What will you do?

Charlotte Tucker invites your politically correct comments at cetst13@pitt.edu.