Artificial Cheese

When I think of a racist, I think of a shotgun-wielding country boy with a greasy NASCAR t-shirt and a chipped tooth. That is a comfortable stereotype for me, as the picture painted doesn’t resemble me at all. I pride myself on being an un-racist, at least I did until I realized that everyone is racist, especially those who overtly claim to be the opposite.

This realization came as I was walking down the street in South Philadelphia one night, and I was harmlessly passed by countless caucasians. Just then, a group of three African American males walked by and I felt a bit more tense. I kept my head a little low and avoided any eye contact, as if they would attack me if I were to look at them. Of course, they just passed me by without incident, as I could have told you they would if you asked me at the time. But why the uneasiness?

Since that day I’ve come to the realization that people, including me, are curing racism by changing it’s definition. “Tolerant” is the word that we like to use as an antonym to “racist”; as in, “I will tolerate your hunger” rather than, “I will feed you.” Nothing is getting solved, we are just learning to live with stereotypes and letting them affect our decisions and behaviors in very subtle ways.

I don’t have a solution for this problem, nor do I know whether a solution is required, but I think its something to keep in the back of all of our heads. I’m sure that we are a more tolerant society now than we were 50 years ago, but I’m not so sure that we aren’t just sweeping our problem under the rug and hoping it will go away.