BLOG IN YOUR FACE

 PART I

I absolutely hate working the evening shift because I miss out on so much good TV and I, unfortunately do not have a DVR. This week, CNN is doing their much-hyped series entitled Black In America.  From what I can gather, Black In America  is a long, hard look at what life is like for African Americans these days and what strides their race and culture have made recently. How are blacks perceived these days? The answer would entirely depend on who you asked. And a lot of the answer I think would depend on what part of the country the person doing the perceiving grew up in and the African-American culture that they firsthand witnessed. Our experiences shape our perception.

I have been wanting to write a post like the following for nearly as long as I have had this blog. But, I always get worried that I will come off the wrong way and so I abandon the quest. I was stretching before my run this morning and watching a trailer for Black In America.  I do some of my best thinking while running and today was no exception. I think I have finally figured out the direction I want to go with my thoughts on stereotypes and prejudice.

First, check out one of my favorite blogs: STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE.

It is a celebration of stereotypes. More importantly, it is a recognition that stereotypes do  indeed exist and we can be open and talk about them…even laugh  about them!

To me, a stereotype is simply the result of a repetitive experience or encounter with something that eventually breeds some sort, or many sorts of generalizations. As we grow older and those generalizations go unchanged because our environment (those repetitive experiences and encounters) goes virtually unchanged, we subconsciously begin to accept those generalizations as reality. Your reality is different than mine, your buddy’s reality is different than yours, his mother’s reality is different than your buddy’s and her grandfather’s reality…well, he may have Dementia and be out of touch with any sort of reality, but that’s not my point.

My point is this: Stereotypes are the result of environmental factors,  and Prejudice  is embedded  or  implanted  within us by an outside force (usually another person).

WE CANNOT BE TAUGHT STEREOTYPES. STEREOTYPES ARE INNOCENT, EVEN IF THEY ARE “NEGATIVE” STEREOTYPES. WE DO NOT KNOW ANY BETTER UNLESS WE ARE PROVEN WRONG. STEREOTYPES ARE NOT  CONCSIOUS PHENOMENON. HATE - PREDJUDICE - IS TAUGHT, JUST LIKE ALGEBRA.

I was incredibly fortunate to be raised in a household that did not teach me to hate. Anyone. Period. For that priceless lesson, I must give many thanks to my wonderful parents. I do, however, have stereotypes embedded in my subconscious brain that will always be there until my life’s encounters and experiences blow them out of the water. I can’t help where I was born. I can’t help the people that have surrounded me throughout my life. I can’t go back and un-witness the things I have witnessed, nor do I desire to…

Because this is my blog and I can do whatever I want to do, I am going to take all of my stereotypes and put them right out on the table for everyone to see. The explanation of WHY I am doing this will come after I have laid it all out there. This may seem crude and shocking, but bear with me. First, I will be doing word association as best I can in order to bring out the most from my sub-conconsciousness. In other words, I will be saying the VERY FIRST words or short phrases that come to my mind in order to keep myself as honest and open as possible. Then I will give a short history of my experiences with each subset. Finally, I will attempt to examine the possible root causes of my stereotypical thought processes.

Here goes nothing.

Part II

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…African-Americans:

n**ger, soul food, rap, gangster, thug, Baptist, family, welfare, projects, baby mama, goofy, athlete, basketball, Willie Mays, chitlins, brutha, fried chicken, barbecue, crack, Dave Chapelle, saggy pants, do rag, corn rows, afro, proud

Wow. I actually surprised myself for a second with that first one. But then I got to thinking: Where I come from (Iowa) that word gets thrown around like its nothing. It always surprises me when I see a public figure get ridiculed for accidentally (or on purpose) letting that word slip. Growing up and to this day when I go back home, people use that word on a regular basis. Blacks and  Whites. To my parents generation and before them, the “n-word” had a lot of hate and prejudice driven behind it. For me, the word doesn’t carry much shock value. Perhaps that is why it was the first word that came to my head in my word association exercise. To me, I don’t feel as if the word carries a negative connotation. It certainly doesn’t carry a positive one. But as a society, I think we should simply let the word evolve as it is meant to evolve. It may die in the next generation or it may become just another common word in our vocabulary. But for now, I don’t think it should be as taboo as people are making it out to be in mainstream news and politics. I feel like if we take away the negative meanings behind words (after all, they are just  words), it will make it a lot harder to spread hate by using them!

But about my other word associations…

I grew up in Northwest Iowa, not exactly dominated my African-Americans, but nonetheless they were a part of my every day life growing up. My first black friends were two sisters on my tee-ball team. My first kiss was a black girl. My first girlfriend was a black girl. I was on an all-male dance team in high school and played sports throughout my entire youth with black team mates.

I became very close to one in particular. They called him “Butter” because when he was born he looked like a white baby! Butter quickly became one of my great friends. Butter was the first person that ever offered to sell me marijuana. Butter was the first person that ever took me into “The Projects,” or, in other words, one of the poorest communities in the entire city. Butter was a great athlete. Butter never graduated high school. Butter was the first kid I ever knew that joined a gang. Butter still sells drugs to this day. Butter was like so many other black kids that I knew.

I have grown up quite a bit by now. The company that I work for is extremely proud of its black employees and they are proud to be here. Many of them comprise the most powerful social organization within the company; a club of black employees that empower each other, help the community and give each other the social network and leadership opportunities to succeed. My boss is black. Most of my favorite co-workers are black. They are so witty and so  hilarious! They are constantly doing one of two things: 1) making me smile and/or 2) bringing me food.

The black people that surround me now appear to be completely different from those that I grew up with. The two groups share a few things in common, however. One is family. It seems like black families are so much larger and so much more connected than my family could ever dream of being. When my black friends would get together with their families for the holidays, they would have to do it at a park shelter because nobody’s home was big enough! Another similarity is faith. The black Baptist churches in the Midwest have the biggest and most active congregations of any church. Black people LOVE to praise the Lord!

Black people are by far the race that I have had the most socialization around. I have seen everything from the lowest of the low in the black community all the way up to the most successful and proud of them all. I have stereotypes that are a result of seeing both extremes with my own eyes. Once again, I am not ashamed of these stereotypes and I won’t deny that any of them are there.

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Native Americans

Alcohol, drunk, casino, indians Macy, Sioux, War Eagle, meth, paint huffing, “Engines,” sweat ceremonies, Tatanka, Pocahontas, sense of humor

I didn’t have any encounters with Native Americans until junior high, despite growing up in a town called Sioux City. The area where I grew up had a strong history of Native American presence including a famous chief named “War Eagle” of the Sioux tribe. A beautiful monument overlooking the spot where the Big Sioux River meets the Missouri River displays “War Eagle” smoking a peace pipe and proudly looking over his land atop the Loess Hills.

Sadly, the only Native American kids I ever really knew as a kid were named Ike and John, and they rarely showed up to middle school…if they did, they caused a heck of a lot of trouble. I can remember driving through Macy, NE which is a short distance from where I grew up and just being completely flabbergasted as to how people could actually live in filth and shacks like the people there did…and Macy, NE is 95% Native American. The only other time I encountered a Native American is if I saw one stumbling around the streets near the Gospel Mission or Salvation Army, and of course there were some that were fortunate enough to work in the local Indian owned casinos.

To me, it was really hard learning about the legendary stories of Sacajuewa, Pocahontas and Crazy Horse in school, but then see the poverty and shame that those people are living in nowadays.

Once again, it took me leaving my hometown in order to get a different glimpse of the Native American culture. I attended the University of South Dakota where they absolutely GLORIFY Native Americans. Many social and lecture halls are named after the people and there are constantly food festivals and Pow Wows going on throughout the year. Yet, it only takes one trip out to Rosebud - one of the largest Indian reservations in the nation, located in western South Dakota - to bring me back to my old stereotypes. The poverty and alocholism in that area is astounding…I mean absolutely heartbreaking…

Then I moved to Nebraska, and got to know a white guy - a colleague - named Howard. He mentioned that he was taking Lakota language classes at a local community college. I was intrigued and mentioned that I had always wanted to attend an ceremonial sweat. Long story short, I got my opportunity…and it was incredible. It is called “inipi” and it is an experience that everyone should include on their bucket lists. I was a little nervous upon arrival at the sweat lodge, but my fears were quickly eased when I noticed how incredibley funny and goofy Native Americans can act! They tell jokes to ease tension and kid around ALL OF THE TIME. After five minutes of being there, I felt like I had been attending the lodge all of my life. It was easily one of the top 10 best nights of my 25 years on this Earth.

And yet, the sterotypes remain. They are still there because a person cannot just forget  about the things that he sees growing up. Native Americans are by far the most oppressed culture in America, and they have almost ALL resorted to self-destructive behavior in order to cope with that oppression. We are fighting a “War on Terror” right now in a far away country, yet when we came to this land, WE  were the terrorists, and look at the destruction we have caused for an entire race of people that once were so proud of this land.

Yes, I have my stereotypes, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have empathy for Native Americans.

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Mexicans/Hispanics

beaner, packing house, La Juanita, dirty, hard working, drugs, Astro Van, gook, gangs, friendly, Quince, soccer, salsa dancing, low rider trucks, homies, ESL, illegal, cocaine, vato, Catholic

Their is a town south of where I grew up that is cleverly called South Sioux City, but more commonly referred to as “Little Mexico.” If I had to take a stab at a guess, I would say that over 65 percent of that town is Hispanic. My hometown? About 30 to 40 percent.

Sadly, I was socialized to believe that the Mexicans in my town were almost solely resposible for the drug problem and mostly responsible for any of the crime. Looking back, I simply don’t think that is the case. I mean, yes, there are some Mexicans that work 18 hours a day on the kill floor of Sioux City’s packing houses, 6 days a week, all year round. How else is this humanly possible without the aid of a little nose candy or meth? Kids at my school would call the Mexican kids “beaners” and make fun of them for their Goodwill clothes or their personal hygiene. They were the brunt of jokes when 6-8 of them would hop out of ONE car coming into the school yard each morning. People in my hometown had the mentality that if you couldn’t speak English well, you basically shouldn’t come out in public. Every week the media would report of yet another illegal alien bust at some large manufacturing plant or packing house and then all I would hear around me is “…those damn Mexicans need to go back where they came from…”

If you blame a kid for developing sterotypes in that kind of atmosphere, then you are insane. And I did  develop sterotypes, a lot of which unfortunately stick with me today.

But the more I think about and get to know Mexican people, the more I really  like them. Mexican people are extremely hard workers and seem to be very  reliable employees. In fact, I am not quite sure that Sioux City’s economy - or a lot of other cities’ economies for that matter - would thrive without them. Mexican people do a lot of behind the scenes work and they are proud to do it. In fact, Mexicans take a lot of pride in being in America, in general. Yes, we see them with Mexican flags in their back windows, but we must understand that that is their heritage; a lot of them left their friends and families behind there. It doesn’t say that they are not proud to be Americans. Afterall, this country has given them freedoms far and beyond the ghettos of Mexico.

The thing we have to remember is that a lot of Mexicans had just one choice: Feed my family or suffer and die. The other thing that we have to remember is that gaining citizenship in America IS…NOT…AN…EASY…PROCESS! Do I agree that every Mexican needs to become a citizen in order to reap the benefits of citizenship? YES! But it simply is not that easy. I think our government should be putting more money into ENCOURAGING citizenship and less money into DISCOURAGING immigration. There are many Mexicans who are eager to work and earn a living while millions of Americans sit on their fat asses and take money from the governement like its nobody’s business.

See? Look! Now I have gotten clear off subject. All I am saying is that yes, I have developed many sterotypes over the years about Mexicans, but at the same time, I have empathy for a lot of them because my my Great-Grandparents (and probably yours) were immigrants at one time too. And it was rough. But all they wanted was a better life. So do many Mexicans. This is the land of the free, we should be helping them and encouraging their children to be better intigrated into school and activities to keep them from going down the wrong path to gangs and drugs.

Every single day I talk to the young Mexican man, “Sal” who empties my trash can at work. I use GOOGLE to help me with my translation and we have developed a warm friendship. Sal empties trash cans for a living, but he is also a strict Catholic with a wife and 2 kids. I’ve never seen him without a smile on his face. Sal talks about playing soccer on the weekends. Sal hopes that one day he will only work 8 hours a day instead of 16. Sal wants his kids to go to college. Sal told me that I should run in the Cinco De Mayo 5k, and so I did. Sal is my new friend and it is through him that I am developing new sterotypes about Mexicans. “Good” stereotypes. Sal is a good man. I could care less if Sal has a green card or not…

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Asians.

quiet, reclusive, chink, skinny, gross food, smart, math, rats, dog meat, egg drop soup, marajuana, bowling alley, unsociable, shy, hard working, non-drinkers, non-smokers

It seemed that in my hometown community there were only a small handful of Asian people, most of which were Vietnamese. Nearly all of the Asian kids I grew up with, as I recall, were EXTREMELY intelligent. I can remember how good they were at math and science, and how they always made honor roll. Most of the Asian people I knew growing up were very nice people, but tended to stick together more than they ventured out. Asian people always seem to be approachable (and friendly), but they never did the approaching. If you smile at an Asian, you will surely get a smile back, but don’t expect them to initiate eye contact, or conversation for that matter.

I don’t know a lot about Asian marriages, but one of my stereotypes of Asian families is that whatever Dad (husband) says, goes. Its as if the men in Asian households run the show and that is the way it is. In Sioux City, IA if you are an Asian and you have been in America for awhile, you probably own a restaurant or you are some type of engineer or doctor. If you are a fairly recent Vietnamese immigrant, you work a one of the packing houses and you are at the bowling alley with at least 30 of your friends every Friday and Saturday. If you are Asian and live in Sioux City, you just LOVE  to bowl.

If you are Asian, I don’t see you out at the bar, or drinking at all for that matter. I don’t ever see you smoking cigarettes either. If you are an Asian teenager with parents that have some money, then you drive a Honda Civic with a ridiculous exhaust system.

There is not a single Asian person that works on the floor of my building (that’s 500 people) and I don’t think I have seen one walking around the rest of the building. I don’t know where they all work. There is an Asian family that lives directly next door to Jaci and I. We have been in the house for 4 months now and we have only seen  the husband one time. I walked over an introduced myself to the wife and she simply smiled and nodded her head to me. If I say hi to the children, they squeal and run inside.

To me, Asians don’t go out of their way to be noticed or recognized, but they are good people with good heads on their shoulders. It seems like they want to mind their own business and are perfectly happy with us minding ours. But I’ll tell you what, I lived with a Chinese gal while I was in Wales and man! did some of the stuff she cooked STINK to high heavens!

Other than an ENORMOUS marajuana bust in Sioux City that was operating out of 6 rental houses and totalled MILLIONS of dollars, I have never had or seen a problem with any Asian people. Sure, just like the rest of the groups above, I have my stereotypes from growing up…I’m not gonna lie. 

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Indians (from India).

don’t use toilet paper, vegetarian, hard to understand, computers, head covers, dot on forehead, curry, nice, friendly, strict, Hindu, cricket, elephants, caste system, letter “R” sounds funny when they say it, stick together, moustache

The first time I ever encountered anyone from India was in college. Sure, there was one here and there in Sioux City, especially after Gateway (computers) headquarters was built in North Sioux City. But, I really started seeing them in large numbers when I got to the University of South Dakota. It appeared that every single computer programming major at that school was from India. They always walked around campus in groups of 3 or more and the strangest part was that I rarely saw women. That led me to believe that Indian women must not attend university. Is that a cultural thing?

I moved to Wales my senior year of college and very briefly at one point lived with two guys from India. Those two gentelmen were very nice guys, but like many Asians that I know, they kept to themselves quite a bit. They cooked with curry every single meal. And the most peculiar thing of all is that they used a plastic cup filled with water to clean their bottoms instead of toilet paper. I never got the courage to ask them about that one, though. They were both computer enginneering majors (big surprise) and they moved out hastily before the semester was over. I think it was because my other roomate made them feel very uncomfortable and would threaten them on a daily basis. But they never retaliated. They were very cordial, patient and passive people.

At work, our entire IT department consists of people from India. They all eat together and they almost always have a salad and hot tea for lunch. They will talk your ear off if you get them going, but unfortunatley they are a little hard to understand. Again, they are pretty much all men, no women (I don’t think). My favorite Indian person is a security guard at my place of employment named “Mr. Sing.” There are about 5000 people that work here and I am almost positive that he knows all of them by name, and addresses them as so. He has a chair to sit on but he always stands, presumabley so that he does not miss a chance to greet someone. 

I think every Indian person I have ever known has a moustache.

From movies such as Bend it like Becham and books like Ghandi’s biography, I have always assumed that Indian family structure is pretty strict and traditional. I think that every member of the family has their place and their duty and is looked down upon (maybe even shunned) for stepping outside that role.

Indian people are no different. My life experiences have led me to develop stereotypes about them and their way of life, and as with the rest of my stereotypes above, I am not ashamed nor proud of them. They are simply a reflection of my nurturing and experience. Nothing more. Nothing less. 
 

PART III

This, the shortest of these three sections, is simply my attempt to sum up my thoughts about my own stereotypes and how myself and others can be better people once we are aware of our personal stereotypes.

Saying that “…all Indian people are dirty and have poopy butts…” doesn’t make you a bad person. Saying that “…all black people are Baptist…” doesn’t make you right. All of us have stereotypes about other cultures and races and if we have ever done even the slightest bit of self reflection, then we recognize that we have hundreds, if not thousands of them. Why are we so ashamed of our stereotypes?

We need to EMBRACE them! Once we can come out and be honest with ourselves, then we can begin the process of challenging ourselves to break down those stereotypes by living a little:

- Go to a Cinco De Mayo Parade or your locally owned Mexican restaurant. Take a Spanish class. Volunteer at La Casa Latina.

- Go to a Pow Wow or Native American Pride festival. Volunteer at a 12-step program on an Indian reservation.

- Read a book on Hinduism or Ghandi.

- Go to an All-Black church or ask your black co-worker out for a drink. 

- I need to take my own advice and continue to try and intereact with my Asian neighbors. I need to keep telling myself that they are not rude, it is just their culture to be passive and reclusive.

More importantly, we need to recognize our own stereotypes so that we do not pass them on to our children in the form of PREDJUDICE. I wish I could have seen the show Black in America, but I like to think that it celebrated the leaps and bounds that good parenting and upbringing in the last 2 generations has done for race relations amoung Blacks and Whites. But we still have work to do. We will ALWAYS have work to do.

Our country is going through a rough enough time as it is. The last thing we need is racial tension. We live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Freedom means that everyone that is here deserves to be here. Bravery now means that we need to find the courage within ourselves to confront our own  stereotypes, not only to better ourselves, but for the future of America.