How did you learn what racism is?

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When I was very young, my mother explained to me what racism is. I processed what she told me correctly. But the conclusion I came to made so little sense that I rejected it. So I said I didn't understand.

And so many more attempts to explain it to me followed with every time me processing correctly what racism is, and then dismissing as it as can't be right and then struggling to try and find what I thought I was missing.

Eventually I ended up explaining my thought process and so learned that what I had been throwing out as couldn't be right was exactly right. This is one of my earliest memories and has stayed with me for how profoundly nonsensical I thought racism was, and it hasn't changed one bit since then.

So how was it for you? I imagine some of you will have learned the hard way by being on the wrong end of it. I'm most interested in if anyone had a similar story as me, but interested in any and all answers. Also, it might not be something anyone would like to admit, but I wondered if anyone started out racist from the start. I'd like to hope people don't, and others make them that way, but if it's not something you'd like to talk about, I've included a poll so you can say you were born racist without revealing yourself. At least I think it won't reveal you. I don't know this forum well enough to know for sure.

Living in Detroit with my mom, and grandma and my mom freaking out that a black kid came over to play one day.

No one is born racist, it's taught and how you are brought up and what you are exposed to.

I never learned it nor have I ever been exposed to it. I only knew about it because my mom told me. But I only thought racism was when you don't like someone because they are black or Jewish or have a different skin color or nationality and I thought racism was when you treat someone different due to those things and discriminating them because of their skin color or nationality. I was an adult when I realized you can still be racist and not hate black people. It just means stereotyping and generalizing like judging someone based on their skin color so you assume they are going to steal from you so you follow them around the store while a white person is taking stuff off shelves and putting it in their pocket and walks out. That has actually happened because I have read comments about it so the black person finally tells the store clerk "Oh by the way, I saw that woman putting stuff in her pockets and walking out while you were too busy following me." I think they did that as a lesson to teach them about racism about racial profiling. Also I learned that feeling uncomfortable around someone because they are different than you is also a for of racism. I grew up in an area where everyone was different so there were different nationalities so I was exposed to it from a young age and I never felt uncomfortable around someone who is different than me. But I was shocked when my mother told me I had some racism in my family because my relatives will feel uncomfortable around someone who is black or Mexican or something because they are used to being around their kind. Growing up, everyone was segregated like blacks lived on one side of town and everyone in their area was white and this was in Wisconsin. But in Montana, people were either white or Native American and we had some foreign exchange students in high school. There was no diversity there with race like there is in Portland, OR and any larger cities because that is where immigrants tend to live. Plus my parents never judged anyone based on their nationality or race so I never saw them as any different so I felt confused when I first heard how people treated people based on their race because I thought they were normal people and she told me they are normal and that is how stupid racism is. It's like disliking someone just because they have blonde hair or blue eyes. That is how dumb racism is. If I ever disliked a black person or a Mexican it was because of what kind of kids they were and how they treated me, not because of their skin color and I never ever connected their behavior to their race. That never occurred to me and I didn't even know people did it until I was an adult so that was shocking.

When I was six years old (74 years ago) a bunch of Catholic kids beat me bloody for killing Jesus. That is how I learned about anti-semitism. Now the anti-semites just accuse me of controlling the banks and the newspapers.

I wasn't born racist, and because my parents didn't raise me to be racist, one of the reasons I was bullied in elementary school in the redneck city we lived in was because I played with the Black and Hispanic children. Basically, the city we lived in at the time was one of those that only allowed white families to live there. Even though that had changed by the time we moved there, many of the residents were still pretty racist. During the summer before my 8th grade year, my family moved to the neighboring city which was far more diverse, and the bullying pretty much stopped.

In the 2016 defintion you are automatically a racist if you are born white because of your privilage. This has radically changed since I was young. Then it was not a group thing, you yourself had to be prejudiced, and usually have at least some hate or discriminate against another race (not just any group different then yours).

The definition of privilage has gotten much broader also changing from an situation of an individual, to the group the person belongs to.

I don't think, thankfully, that that is a mainstream opinion yet. And that's not what I'm asking for. I'm talking about real racism.

Maybe not the majority definition, but the majority definition amoung the opinion makers who matter.

I am an old fart who believes nobody is born racist people learn it from peers or become racist because of situations. In my case during elementary school everybody got along, by high school in the early to mid 1970's black and white students sat at seperate tables and on occasion there was a group clash. If a black and white student got into a minor scrape or disagreement word would spread and the school was on edge for a few days. It was not a class thing the very small black area was just as middle class as white area in my school district. The big race riots were just 5 years prior. Talk about getting mugged in black neighborhoods and fear of housing values going down if a black family moved in was common. That is how I learned my prejudices. I unlearned them or most of them by dealing with good and bad people from a variety of races. Similar experiences bieng forced to deal with people inform my views of NT's.

When I was about 7 or 8 my parents decided we would all take a automobile trip to the Kentucky/Tennessee area from northern Illinois where we had moved from Chicago a couple of years earlier. In the little town of Loves Park, IL in the early 1950s there were no dark skinned residents and because we moved from Chicago when I was 6, I only had a fleeting acquaintance with one dark kid.

So, on our driving trip we came to "Lookout Mountain" where you could view 3 or 4 states (unimpressed) and as I lined up to get a drink at a fountain (set in a semi-religious setting) a big man came over and hit the kid drinking in front of me in the back of the head. The kid was bleeding from his mouth (I was in shock) and I saw his dad coming to his rescue (I knew it was his dad because he was the same color). But when the dad got there he merely bent protectively over his son as he hurried him away, while the big white man screamed at him.

Later my parents gave me a sketchy explanation about discrimination and the "Whites Only" sign I had hadn't noticed. This was definitely one of the most traumatic episodes of my life and has had a lasting effect on me since.

When I was in grade school, I began understanding what racism really was every year when my school celebrated MLK.

Luckily, my parents were never racist, but felt a need to instill in me that there were people who wrongly judged others for their skin color.

I knew the basic concept of racism, but it took a long time for me to internalize it. When I was young I invented a world in my head that everyone was equal for the most part, but in different ways. I had lots of difficulties with stress and social skills but to compensate for that I had my high intelligence. I came up with this to keep myself optimistic even when times seemed bleak and rough for me.

I eventually learned that racism still exists. Racism today can be very confusing to understand. Even with it not being so obvious everywhere, I learned it is still very harmful.

Last edited by Hydromind on 15 Jul 2016, 9:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

I learned the hard way. When I was a kid, Christian Bullies (mostly Catholic) beat me up for killing Jesus.

I am 80 so this is a long time ago. Nowadays we do not see such crude anti-semitism in the U.S.

I still hear "Jew you down" used occasionaly. I was called k*e often in Junior High School (middle school). But that is anti Jewish not racism.

I grew up in a NYC housing project. It was extremely heterogeneous, racially, and my friends were African American, Hispanic, and Caucasians of every European nation. When I was eight, one of my best friends, who was African American, invited me to his birthday party. I looked forward to it, until my mother got a phone call from my friend's mother, who explained to my mother that I was dis-invited, because I was white. I didn't understand it then, and I still think it was a disgusting, unjustifiable act. Welcome to racism.

No one is born a racist, but we are all born -capable of being racist-. Little pitchers have big ears.