In
this diary by TexasDemocrat, he reminded me of racism I've encountered in my life. I identified with TexasDemocrat on the difficulty of dealing with people who didn't think twice about using racial slurs in front of me.
Except in my case, I am a man of color, an Indian-American. And I was born and raised in Iowa.
Race is a strange matter for an Indian-American of my generation, especially growing up in Middle America as I did. I'm 38, and white Iowans in the 70s and 80s didn't quite know what to make of me. I was mostly treated as an honorary white person, not unlike how I understand Japanese and non-white U.S. citizens were treated in Apartheid-era South Africa in the final couple decades before whites ceded absolute power. But there were plenty enough times when I was reminded I was different. I was the guy with a funny name that others couldn't pronounce (I legally changed my name in law school for this reason). I was the non-Christian who didn't celebrate Christmas and have any holiday plans or presents to talk about (there were no Jews around who shared my plight, as there were later in my law school years at Duke and since then in D.C.). I was the brown kid who was picked on by school bullies in junior high and high school. I suffered the occasional racist verbal assault from passersby who were total strangers, like the time in summer 1992 when as I, wearing a suit-and-tie, walked along Grand Avenue to my summer job at a Des Moines law firm, the white driver in a car stopped at a red light angrily and without provocation shouted at me: "Hey! Go home!" And my family were immigrants who, when I was toddler-age, suffered abuse at the hands of neighborhood teenagers who pelted our house with apples from our own backyard apple tree just because we had brown skin and funny accents and came from another country to live here.
But yet, seeing me as an honorary white person as I noted above, white people around me didn't think twice to use racial slurs about other groups in conversation with me. I was fully assimilated into white Iowa culture, which is just what happens with children of isolated immigrant families in America. My sophomore year in college I shared an apartment with 2 roommates, both white. One didn't think twice to refer to Asians as "gooks" right in front of me. That guy was, at the time, a Democrat and very anti-Republican, although I learned at our 10-year high school reunion (the three of us roommates all were in high school together, too, although not really friends then) that he and his wife (who was his high school sweetheart) had since become Republicans and very anti-Democrat. And the other made jokes using the word "wetbacks." Let me note that I had never heard the term "wetbacks" and didn't know what it was--I had no idea it was a racial slur against Hispanics, which I learned only much later (I didn't ask my roommate at the times he used it). And other times I found myself hearing white people refer to black people as niggers, right in front of me. One white girl at a party once casually talked to me about how there are "blacks" and then there are "niggers," the implication being that blacks are the Huxtable-types (from the 1980s "Cosby" show), and niggers are those blacks who don't live and act like white people like her think they should.
All these times, with one exception, I didn't raise my voice. The exception was one of the times the sophomore-year college roommate who liked to refer to "gooks" said that slur in front of me. He was, at that moment, agitated about other stresses in his life having nothing to do with Asians, as he was planning on getting engaged to his high school sweetheart--also at the same college with us--and was stressed about their financial picture through the rest of their time in college. I don't remember what the specific conversation was about, or how his mention of Asians fit in, but when he referred to "gooks" that time, I shot back disapprovingly, "hey!" He stayed on offense, further agitated, and complained about "gooks" further, and I dropped the matter.
Other times with him and other people, I just didn't respond. I didn't approve, but I didn't speak out, either.
Just like the good Dr. Ken Shelton apparently didn't speak out those many years ago when his college football teammate George Allen was talking about niggers and stuffing the head of a dead animal in a black person's mailbox.
Why, may you ask?
It's easy to scold someone for not always speaking out on the spot. But I can attest to it that when you're young, you just don't know how to react to some things, including racism. I was always conflict-averse by nature--still am although I'm getting better at engaging and not looking the other way. I also just didn't know what to say. And I didn't want to make an uncomfortable moment even more uncomfortable for whoever was around at the moment. It really comes down to fear.
How I reacted to those incidents back then is one of the things I would change if I could relive those years knowing what I know now. I would confront, I would engage. Yes, it would be uncomfortable...it's uncomfortable when I do it today. Conflict is uncomfortable, that is a fact of life. But I've learned engaging in it is better than walking away, not just in dealing with racism or politics but also in dealing with other things in life. Hell, even in my nearly-3-year relationship with my wife (the last 17 months of those we've been married), I can attest that the marriage is better because I confront her when I'm unhappy with something she's said or done, rather than always looking the other way. Sure I pick my battles, but a female platonic friend taught me that women like men who stand up for themselves, and they disrespect men who don't--even though the heat of a moment doesn't reveal that reality. I think the same principle applies in life: stand up for yourself and your fellow man and woman, and you and they are more respected than they would be otherwise.
And what if that college roommate who liked to refer to "gooks," or the other roommate who referred to "wetbacks," ever ran for office?...I don't expect them to, they are just ordinary guys each with only an ordinary citizen's interest in politics. Neither ran for any student government positions in high school or college, or volunteered on a campaign or gave money, or talked about ever running for office in the future. But if either did, I wouldn't hesitate to come forward with his use of that slur in college. If he regrets having used racial insults in his youth, it's his responsibility to respond as such. But make him respond in some way I would. And I know I'd instantly put myself into the center of controversy, that I would become part of the story. That's fine...engaging is good, it's better than looking the other way and pretending that something that matters doesn't.
So I identify with the good Dr. Ken Shelton, and I applaud him for coming forward now, when he has the chance to make right what was wrong. It does take balls, as I can picture how hard it is to know the Gooper spin machine now is attacking him, an ordinary citizen who isn't interested in himself being a story. Hat tip to you, Ken.