by Alan Fernald

Created on: March 18, 2007   Last Updated: October 17, 2008

Everyone is a racist. Regardless of skin color, every single person with whom I have discussed the topic of racism has eventually admitted that they too did indeed discriminate based upon the color of a person's skin. Even I have found myself at times thinking racist thoughts.

As a member of a multi-ethnic family, my personal experiences and observations while living invarious countries has lead me to the conclusion that everyone is guilty of discriminating either for or against a person based upon the color of his/her skin. If you don't believe me, then imagine that you are in a convenience store at 3 a.m., and a young white man walks in, what is your first thought? If a young black man walked in? What if it were a young middle-eastern man?

By simple definition, if your reaction isn't the same for each young man, then you are a racist.

Fortunately, after that first reaction, most people simply go back to shopping and forget about it. However, my topic today is the trivial things we do to others, without realizing that they are racist.

I never realized how prevalent these little things were until my wife finally arrived in the United States, bringing along the rest of the family. My wife is South American Hispanic, and Japanese, which, in my favorite saying, my children are Latino, Asian, and white mutt. Spanish is the language of our house, with a smattering of Japanese occasionally rearing it's head.

One day, my daughter arrived from school and asked me about something her teacher had said. She asked me why her teacher thought that she should tell my daughter, "My parents hated the Japanese, but I don't." Normally, I would ignore a statement like this. However, since my daughter is rather proud of her mixed Hispanic/Japanese heritage, I had to question why a teacher in our public schools make a comment so blatantly racist?

So I confronted the teacher. And the teacher had indeed said this! The problem was that the teacher didn't even realize how hurtful this was to say to a 4th grade girl. Was it a big thing? To me or my wife, no, but to a young girl? To have your nose rubbed into your ethnicity?

After that, I started to pay attention to what I said to people around me, and found that I have also been guilty of saying things that were racist. Listening to others around me, I realized that they too were guilty of racism, even though I KNEW that these same people were not racist.

The whites, the blacks, the browns, the reds, the yellows, and even the purples and greens! Everyone I knew was guilty (some more so than others) of making comments that were racist!

Am I a racist? I wish I could say I'm not, but I will keep doing my best to treat people as individuals. This teacher, by making a mistake with my daughter, ended up teaching me a very valuable life lesson.

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