It being MLK day and all, I thought it might be an appropriate time to talk about racism.<\/p>\n
Nobody wants to be a racist \u2013 at least, nobody that I know. I certainly don\u2019t. But I suppose it depends on how you grow up and the environment you were raised in.<\/p>\n
And despite the best intentions of my parents and growing up and learning in diverse places of education, I\u2019m afraid that I am<\/em> a bit of a racist. While I don\u2019t do things like shout slurs at people on the streets or become friends with people based on their skin, there\u2019s something ingrained in my subconscious that causes me to notice skin tone and have it affect my judgment of that person\u2019s character.<\/p>\n I think there are a lot of influences to this. People of certain races I\u2019ve known in the past and the portrayal of different races in the media are perhaps the two major factors. I treat people differently based on their personalities; I wouldn\u2019t tell the same story the same way to two different people if I know ahead of time that they\u2019ll have opposite reactions. Does this apply more so if the people are of different races? It\u2019s hard to tell for sure, but I may.<\/p>\n Additionally, if I meet someone for the first time, I am fairly certain that I do a bit of racial profiling somewhere in my brain. It\u2019s not something as negative as: well, this guy\u2019s obviously a thug. But I probably do have certain expectations, like an Asian person being logical, that I can attribute to nothing but their race.<\/p>\n What can I do to combat that? To treat each person as nothing but an individual and bring no racial assumptions or expectations to the table?<\/p>\n