Let
me just say up front that I am half Hispanic (Colombian) and half white mutt
(Irish, Scottish, Belgian, German, etc.). I've never fit into any one racial/ethnic
group. I was never white enough, I was never Hispanic enough, and I was
definitely not Asian, Native American, or African American/black (whatever the
politically correct term is these days).
I
never knew where to sit in the lunch room at school. See, the friends I made in
my various classes were like my own United Nations, but when they went to lunch,
they all self-segregated into their various racial/ethnic groups. This always
amazed me. Being of mixed ethnicity, I just didn't get it. (This was back in
the 80s, so maybe things are different now that more people are multi-ethnic.)
Sometimes,
I'd sit with my black friends and some of their black friends would look at me
like I had three heads. I knew they were thinking, "What the heck is this
white chick doing here?" And this was repeated with my Hispanic friends,
my white friends, etc.
Eventually,
in high school, I joined the band, so I fit in with that motley crew, and then
I joined the math geeks. Once I went to college, I thought all this racial nonsense
wouldn't be such a problem. Surely people of higher learning wouldn't
generalize based on race, creed, or color. Oh how wrong I was.
The
university I attended, along with regular dorms, had "specialty"
houses. One house was geared towards Native Americans, another towards African
Americans, and so on. I lived in just a general coed dorm, but a few of my
friends (which again were a patchwork of nationalities and colors) lived in the
African-American house.
One
day, I was visiting a few of my friends in the African-American house when they
were having a house meeting. My friends invited me to sit in, not realizing all
hell was going to break loose. See, the university was considering a new policy
to integrate all the houses and many of the residents of the African-American
house were not happy about it. And that's putting a polite spin on it.
I
remember one young lady saying something like, "I have to deal with them all day; I don't want to have to come
home and deal with them at
night!" Now, if it had been a white person saying something like that,
they'd have been labeled a racist. But because the comment came from a black
person or a person of color, it was acceptable.
The
meeting turned into a massive bitch session about how awful "white
people" were and I just sat there wanting the floor to swallow me up. I
was the only white face there, so it wasn't like I wasn't noticed. My friends
felt horrible and later apologized for bringing me. Of course, I told them it
was okay and not to worry.
It's
true, "white people" have done a lot of horrible things and I'm not
going into a list of atrocities. But so have many others of various colors and
nationalities. To make generalities about any group based on the actions of
some is wrong.
The
reason I'm bringing this up is that, yesterday, Twitter was buzzing because a
white female writer (I'm not naming names or going into details) wrote
something insensitive, and perhaps even ignorant, that offended many people. I
am by no means condoning what this writer wrote, but I felt that some of the
backlash that followed was just as bad as the comment that set the whole thing
off.
Several
"women of color" tweeted comments saying negative things about
"white female writers." Being half white myself, this offends me
greatly—to be labeled negatively simply based on my color. That's racism too
folks.
It
is a simple fact that stupidity comes is all shapes, sizes, colors,
nationalities, religions, etc.—it's color blind. So, the next time someone says
or does something stupid, how about we call them on it and address the action,
not the person's color, or nationality, or religion, or sexual orientation, or
anything else that insults a group of people who have done nothing wrong?
Okay,
I'm getting off my soapbox now.
Ria
Restrepo
@RiaRestrepo
on Twitter
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