Having Racist Thoughts

Today I had a great meeting with someone about human capacity and the innovation in ideas from young people like me. Then I headed for class--I was already late. And the bus-ride seemed to be long.

When I sat, I made the conscious decision to sit by an African American older man. A bit of background here is important: I grew up in an environment where people of color and Native American are seen as less even if sometimes we as people of color are making such prejudices. My point is that I know white privilege exists and that often times whites have a better starting line in life than brown people. But sometimes we discriminate within our own ethnic groups (will write about this another time). Other times we discriminate or hold prejudices of other minority ethnic groups (minorities only in the U.S. because we are majority globally).

When I took that sit, I made the decision to not sit by the white college student across from the African American man I chose to sit by. Right when I sat, I started thinking about who this person right next to me might me. He was reading the sports section in the newspaper. I begun to write in my cute black leather journal about the meeting I had just had (I didn't want to forget those new thoughts about humanity, the power of youth, and my role int he world!). On the top of the page where I was writing I had previously written something in Spanish sometime ago (talk about not letting everyone know what you are writing while in the bus, right?).

My first thoughts about this man were the following. Well, he's African American and is on the bus--was wearing "ordinary" clothing. The story I started to make up, through my lenses of what inequality in the world is, was that this man, right next to me, is probably living in poverty, probably doesn't have a job (it was after 11am when this happened), and probably has no formal eduction or any "advanced" education. This I was thinking while listening to La Oreja de Van Gogh, Beyoncé and Gloria Trevi because I did not find the book I am reading for pleasure (I usually forger where I am while reading).

I am not proud of this and I will never say I have never before had racist thoughts.

Well, my assumptions, which sometimes could hold true due to the history of inequality in the nation, were wrong. The person sitting next to me asked in Spanish where I was from (here I frown because I always get this question and it always leads to me getting annoyed for certain reasons). I looked at him funny and asked, "What?" And I think this question came from my beliefs of who he might have been and the disbelief that a black man could speak Spanish so well. I even started thinking about other options to why he might speak Spanish. Was he from the Caribbean? How could he speak Spanish? My stereotyping was falling apart!

Then, after a small conversation with this soft spoken person, I learned that he had lived in Guatemala and Mexico in the past. He used to be a Spanish professor. And now studies Latin Literature. WOW! WHAT?!

I, as an individual committed to social justice, must learn to think of people as people first. I must learn to acknowledge that there are differences between communities, but that stereotypes are stereotypes and were created to be challenged. I must learn to name what it is I think and feel when events happen. Today, I felt compelled to sit by a black man because I have learned that race does not define a person as I have been told many times before. Today, though, I learned that I still hold racist thoughts. I do believe we all hold them, but my first step to progress as a person, is to name it and bring it up whenever I can. And that is exactly what I am doing here. Again, I am not proud of it, but naming it might assist me having less racist thoughts, if not eradicating them from my systems (which I don't think is possible).