Racism from a friend, Part 1

I was lucky growing up. I might be Hispanic, but my Dad never spoke Spanish to us and assimilated well. I went to private schools that he scrimped to pay for. He expected me to do anything and be anything. He cooked and cleaned and sewed, so my image of man/woman's work was never defined; everyone just did what they could. Plus I was smart, and tall, and slender. None of which was more than lucky genes, but it helped.

Although I had learned about racism in school, it was an abstract. I was at an all-girls high school, so it was very female-positive. Race just didn't enter my view.

It wasn't until college that I realized that people still thought that way. Really. It was a shock.

But it was other people being bigots towards other people. It wasn't my circle, it wasn't towards me.

When it came, it wasn't from a boss or a job, it was from a friend. A friend of many years. I knew she had been raised racist, I knew she struggled with it, but it was something I knew she didn't like about herself and was trying to change. I admired that.

And then.

The conversation was about needing Spanish speaking doctors. And suddenly she was past angry, she was overflowing with hate towards those damned people coming here without speaking American and she wasn't going to fucking learn no damned fucking Spanish and those fucking immigrants can just go the fuck home.

And I asked if that included me and my family. No, we spoke English. But my dad didn't, not when he first got here. He was 16, it took some time to learn English...

But she couldn't hear me. Her hate was frothing over.

And so I guess my friend forgot what I was when she was spewing hate. That her hate was directed at me, too.

She apologized. She didn't mean it. There was wine involved; she had a bad day; things are just tough for her...she's sorry. She didn't mean me and mine, after all.

And I hurt. Weeks later, and I hurt. I stay up thinking about it, how her hate started unhinging after Obama was elected. How whites are afraid of a world that is darkening, where their privilege--my privilege--is slipping away. The difference is that isn't my only world. The difference is I am not afraid of change. The difference is that I don't mind sharing, that my table always has room for one more...

And I wonder how many friends I'll have, and how many I'll lose, and who my new friends will be. Because immigration is not something I can stfu about. Racism is not something I can keep quiet in the corner about. And bigotry is something I was raised to rail against. In any form.

Especially from a friend.

On another blog (which I've forgotten) someone posted the absolutely appropriate following:

also, we all have close friends who we don’t realize are racist until these “isolated” incidents happen and then we get to see a side of them that we had no idea existed. the fact that they have suffered or are oppressed in other ways does not make it okey-dokey for them to express that racism that has been hiding in them. and us bearing the brunt of that racism is not something we should just smile off and say “oh, she didn’t mean it”. it still has to get called out as racist.

In other words, you don’t get to feel taller by standing on my back.

No, you don't.


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