I would like to bring up some experiences which helped this white boy to understand better the nature of discrimination. People need to experience the emotional underside of discrimination. It is not just about the economic hardships of black people, oriental people, American Indians or any other cultural subgroup. It is about perspective and feelings which are passed along to all of us as a function of our cultural upbringing and experiences. In different ways, most of us have experienced it in some form in the course of our life experiences. We need to identify those feelings as the universal source of discrimination.
The easiest analogy I can bring up to clarify my point, is the learning experience of a foreign language. My very favorite word in German is “Gemuetlichkeit.” In this one expression you are being reminded of good food, good close family and friends gathered around a warm holiday fire. The word has legs and feelings of its own. Words bring feelings!
“Whitee” and the “N” word are more than letters. They have a long history of emotions and experiences. Depending on your experiences, they carry different emotions… some more intense that others.
Irish and Italian immigrants arrived in large numbers in Boston in the 18 and early 19 hundreds. Catholics were looking for a higher academic home and, frankly, Harvard was avoiding them. This was all documented in the BC Alumni magazine about ten years ago. Harvard was sure there was no way BC graduates could ever become lawyers at Harvard so BC added their own law school… a very highly regarded law school today. What were the feelings of those rejected immigrants. They did not arrive with fancy jobs and education. Today, they run the city!
While resting under a water bag in basic US Army training in 1968, I overheard two Black companions talking about their neighborhood good times in their memberships in just they same way my Fraternity brothers exchanged their social experiences in college. They were drafted out of Harlem. I was drafted out of a small, all white town in MA. To me, this was an “mindopener.” They were us!
Years later I was assigned the job of minority recruiter in a virtually all white STEM University. There were no Black administrators on Campus so off I went to a national black college conference in DC. I was the only white person present and for the first time I felt the pressures of a minority. They could not have treated me better. Princeton and Yale were well represented and were defending themselves from HBCU criticism for taking only the very best students from the historically HBCU applicant pool.
A year later, a Black Ivy League graduate applied to the University for an admissions position. Some less than polite remarks were passed among a couple of staff members… they were not very well informed and exchanged some very overworked and ignorant comments. This is how discrimination happens. In the end, she was hired and our learning experience continued. Today she is a very respected college professor. Her field is in the psychology of discrimination.
After these experiences my wife and I escaped to rural America where we almost never saw a Black person. The white folks up here spoke a different language regarding Black people they had never met. The “good olde boys” were alive and well talking about people they did not even know.
In some respects, it is very simple: “We have met the enemy and they are us!” We come from every possible cultural perspective. We too need to remember that we are minorities!