They don't understand," I mused to myself.
"They don't understand." In the course of my life, I can't count the
number of times I've been asked to overlook subtle and blatant racist
statements and actions.
Usually
these aren't directed at me. They come indirectly, the speaker
maintaining that they aimed their words at some nebulous "other" who
happens to share a bit of the same genetic code as I do.
"I didn't mean you," they say, "You're not like ...."
I
hear, and I want to scream: "But I am like them. I'm so like all of
them in ways that you don't fathom. Were I not a person of Christian
conviction, I'd tell you where to go with your superficial air of
arrogance."
"It's tough to be black in this world," a
great-uncle told me when I was younger. "No matter how much you know,
what measure of success you achieve, what degree of celebrity you
reach, there always seems to be some people of Caucasian extraction who
assume they are innately superior, more intelligent and more able than
you."
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