Feline Warrior

I am glad that we saw the film “True Colors” in class today. I have seen and read of similar experiments and they always come out the same - we find that the African American person gets the short end of the stick.

Oprah did something similar on her show years ago. In the first phase of the experiment, she went out shopping to expensive stores, but did not have her makeup on, nor was her hair done - in other words, she didn’t look like Television Oprah. One of the shops that allows customers in by appointment only (and then one must ring a bell from outside to be let in) did not open the door to speak to Plain Oprah. In the second phase of the experiment, Oprah went out looking like Television Oprah and was let in to the appointment-only shop without an appointment, and received all sorts of luxurious treatment at all the other shops where she’d been shunned just the day before, when she was Plain Oprah.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Eddie Murphy did a routine on Saturday Night Live (SNL) where he went out as himself and then later went out made up as a white man - light-colored makeup on his face, a suit, wig, glasses, briefcase. As himself, he got the usual treatment, nothing special, just a ho-hum day on the subway in New York. But when he was in his white man disguise, he was shocked to learn that the minute the last Black person stepped out of the subway car, a big party began. Dancing girls served drinks, there was music, and everyone had a great time. When the train came to another stop and Black people got on, the fun stopped. In another sequence, White Eddie Murphy went to see a loan officer at the bank and the white loan officer offered him piles of cash - for free.

This was not an experiment, but a comedy skit on SNL. The difference in treatment that people receive, based upon their skin color, had made it into our pop culture by the mid-80s (I just checked and found that Murphy stopped being a regular on SNL in 1984).

The point is that this is mainstream knowledge, this business of different treatment among the races. (Instead of “Separate but equal,” how about “Different but -eh- kinda equal”?) When Dianne Sawyer, Oprah Winfrey, and Eddie Murphy all have the same idea, you know it’s not a fluke! It’s good that our media is shining a light on this issue, yet it’s clearly not enough. The Dianne Sawyer piece was in 1996; the Eddie Murphy segment in the 80s, and who knows when the Oprah piece aired. We can make fun of it yet we cannot do anything to change it? Is that the take-home message? I do not understand what is up with that.

Things do not change if nobody makes them change. If people do not report landlords who use old and illegal applications, those landlords will continue to use those forms. (And strangely enough, people will continue to fill them out.) If we continue to laugh at “jokes” that perpetuate a sense of different-than (or less-than, or even hatred), who will stop telling those jokes? If we do not check ourselves constantly, when will we start to think about what we are saying or thinking?

In a racism awareness workshop that I attended in Washington, DC, I learned that it is normal for me to have “bad” (i.e., judgmental) thoughts - some of my socialization lives within me still. However, it is my responsibility, I learned, to check myself. It is my responsibility to ask myself, “What is my motive? Why did I just say/think that? Was that a fair assessment of that person?” The best person to change my way of thinking is me, and I do it through a constant check-in with myself. It is not a shame-based experience; it is just me, asking myself a few questions. I can do it not only in situations having to do with race and gender, but sexual and gender orientation, age, size, ethnicity - the list can go on and on.

Rather than cry, “I am not a racist!” and then brush off any further thought or discussion, I think it is better to say, “I work hard at not being racist,” and then following through on that with my actions. It seems nearly impossible not to have some sort of preconceived ideas when meeting new people; however, I have found that I have met some incredible humans by being open and not prejudging them. Life is so much more interesting when I am open to the possibilities rather than deciding what those possibilities will be ahead of time.