Dadmaster's soapbox talk on race

To simplify things, let's say that white privilege is simply not having any prejudices stick to you. Anyone in our country can think up dozens of stereotypes for hispanics, blacks, and people with Asian ancestry. Every stereotype is a harmful one, which takes away from an individual's right to create their own identity. American society, a white person basically has no race.

Also, race has no genetic reality. There is no magical boundary between skin colors that separates black and white, and there isn't a "check one or more of the following ethnicities" chromosome. It's a cultural thing that's been made up, so it's only real because it is taught.

When I became a teacher, I was forced to take a one-on-one class in multicultural education because I simply disagreed with the texts' conclusions. So I worked with someone we'll call Dr. Wright.

I had been assigned story after story of people of color telling their personal narratives, and how they had been reduced to their race time and time again, by unintentional jokers, or stereotyping passers-by, or even trusted colleagues. And I dismissed it all. I felt that if I were in their shoes, I could've taken it in stride, and nothing would have changed. But when Dr. Wright asked me to imagine that, instead of some invisible writer telling these stories, it was a person of color that I knew, I put my student Don in there.

I had some great students in my classes. Some fantastic ones. I had some students whose thank-you notes I will probably never throw away, because I know they learned so much from me.

Not Don.

Don spent my classes running around, playing with other kids, and doodling on the assignments. I have no qualms with saying that he was a terrible, terrible, student. But every day, Don came and gave me a hug. Even if he was with another teacher, he'd run out of the line to hug me, because he had a big heart.

Don was 8. But all of a sudden, I was putting him in the shoes of all these people. So he was growing up being told to be more realistic with his dreams of being an architect, because he was black. He was constantly being told by fellow college students that he couldn't be from the US, because he was Asian. He was being told in his job that his accent made the customers uncomfortable, because he was Mexican. Then I knew that it mattered.

I couldn't shut it out anymore. I couldn't just believe that it was only these few people who had decided to write about it, and I couldn't just disregard something that affected them, and not me.

I don't believe that racism is only seen in isolated incidents, and it isn't perpetuated only by outright racists. I think that our world is flooded with prejudices and stereotypes that are subtly taught by society and subtly applied to people according to their race.

I sincerely believe that if we're going to truly work out the insanity of how we see race in today's society, we need to admit that race takes up space in our minds, and that we can and do regard it, so that we can have level-headed dialogue about it, however we can, with those we disagree with, and with those who have a different perspective.

I know this doesn't have to do with DanPar or fatherhood or anything, but it's been on my mind, and this blog is the biggest soapbox I have to stand on.