Have you personally experienced racism against you?

Experienced something similar to what you describe. Lived with a Zoroastrian for a year. He was kind to an old school friend of mine, helping her get her first job as a kindergarten teacher. When we became engaged, her parents  pulled be aside me and told me I shouldn't marry him because he "wasn't British" (he was) and our babies would be coloured. I felt shocked. I'd known them many years and had never known that about them. I broke off the friendship because of it. It turned out that Max and I didn't survive as a couple, but not for any reasons of race.

My husband is Jewish - Ari Itzhak Ehrlich - Polish Jewish ancestry. Both his parents lost their parents, first spouses, and children in the concentration camps. His father, Heinrich, was in Auschwitz. His mother who was blond and blue-eyed survived in hiding with false papers. Ari was born two years after the war and moved to Israel with his parent when he was two. He came to Australia with his mother and sister when I was 11, after his father died. He tells me he did not experience any racism while growing up in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is an affluent area with a mix of many Europeans. Despite what Ari says, I'm aware that antisemitism does exist there because a lot of the people of British descent moved away to avoid the Jewish immigrants.

It is a shame that people feel an urge to destroy the joy and love of others, simply because of colour and heritage. It's a misconception.

A few years ago, Ari participated in a peace march for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. They walked together, in single file and silence, through the centre of Tel Aviv.

Ari sings in several languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, and likes to use music as a medium for peace.

There are serious problems between Israel and her Muslim neighbours. Ari and I are against Israel's tactics and policies concerning the Palestians. We are against the Palestians' tactics too, but we think they have a legitimate cause. We think Israel clearly offends against the treaties on which the modern state of Israel was founded, by stealing land that was never agreed in the original deals.

This issue tends to get muddied by accusations of racism and religious intolerance on both sides, which helps inflame the problems. At the same time, there is racism between the Arabs and Jews - intense, vicious and lethal. And there is racism against Jews and Muslims by Christians and non-believers.

Too large to return to the womb? :D  I like it! Great comment! :)

I knew a person who was nearly apoplectic with rage about "illegals" from Mexico - he was quite mad in a lot of others ways too. I think his main fear was loss of jobs for Americans, but he himself could not hold down a job for more than three days. He asserted that Mexicans are simply much better at every job they did.

He was unaware that the main job drain is industrialisation by computers and robots, outsourcing to third and fourth world countries, and the importing of cheap goods. (Same problem occurring in Australia.)

It makes me wonder where the real cause of racism lies. Is prejudice against an ethnic group caused solely by different appearance? Or is it an underlying paranoia about loss of things like jobs, land, power or resources? Or is it lack of understanding and acceptance of different cultural lifestyles and beliefs? Or is it that all of these get conflated together?

Nope

I've hung with gay people a fair bit too, including a few trannies. They taught me a lot that I could never have learned any other way. Saw a lot of the misery they faced from discrimination. Am a little bit bi myself - but aging and marriage make that irrelevant in my current life. A couple of my gay friends are still close.

I was born in 1956, too late to be a "true" hippie, but have always identified with most of the ideals and live in an area where 15% of the population is hippie. Happy to say many of the children and grandchildren are living the life. We elders are now skilled at activism and very organized. Local farmers are still suspicious and sometimes hostile towards hippies and often think it's all about grass. Slowly, they're beginning to realize that a lot of the green ideals are in their best interests. They're starting to soften.

Cryptic as ever, dear friend.

I suspect you are a natural warrior-hero, springing to the defense of those who cannot defend themselves.

And may have wacked the odd retaliative punch in self-defense.

 Wit is brilliant.

(I got someone's shin once, a hit that could easily have missed. Very effective. Made the bloke jumb back so I had a chance to run.)

You've given me an idea - satire.

Hmmm... I wonder if I'd be capable.

I had to look up "wetback" - dictionary said "informal - derogatory - a Mexican living in the US, especially without official authorization."  What a weird word!

It comes from the crossing of the river across into the U.S..

I experience a sense of guilt about being white.

My father's great-great-grandparents were missionaries to Western Australia who brought Methodism forcibly to the Kaartdijin Noongar people. They were herded off their lands into compounds, fed on white people's food which was less nutritious than their hunter-gathering foods, And housed in tin sheds that were less comfortable and hygienic than their nomadic timber and bark shelters. Their religion, which was essential for survival on the land, was denied to them and over the generations, broken into dysfunctional fragments. The land is intimately connected with who they are as a people. They do not have the concept of land ownership - but rather the land owns them and they are responsible to it for its maintenance and care. The damage my ancestors did still lives in the emotional and mental scars of the descendants.

My mother's great-great-great grandfather murdered almost all the men of the Gunditjmara people to steal their land in Victoria. He gave blankets riddled with chicken pox to the women and children, and poisoned their waterholes. Some of the descendants still live on that land, and some of them have had native title returned to them in a national park at Tower Hill. They too carry the scars.

It does not surprise me when non-whites hate whites. Despite the fact that almost all ethnic groups have hated one another at some time or other, whites have done more damage with their colonialism throughout the world than any other ethnic group. I don't think it is because whites are inherently worse, but rather because we achieved the technological means a little earlier. Also we had created a behavioural sink of crime among ourselves through overpopulation. The causes may explain how and why, but they do not and cannot excuse or justify what we have done, and what we still do.

I think that to help end racism, I, as a white, need to be honest about the truth of our racial behavior, even if I, as an individual, have never hated others for their ethnicity. We cannot even begin to right wrongs unless we first admit them.

Glad you liked my answer.  I try to use my wit and humor whenever I can...lol  Sometimes it even works. 

I believe that racism and prejudice stem from the misconceptions of people and their lives.  

In the late 1800's a relative of mine from Mexico married someone from the area some other relatives of my family live today. My relative was disowned by his parents for not marrying someone from Mexico. So this problem goes back centuries. 

I was very fortunately raised by parents who taught me acceptance of others regardless of race or gender.

Would you tell us who is the "they" you refer too?

What do others see when they look at you?

I don't doubt what you say, but so all of us can get a clearer idea of what is happening, will you tell us:

What kind of work you look for?

How many job vacancies for that kind of work are advertised?

And how many applicants are there for each job?

(In my area, there is an average of 50 applicants for every job advertised, and usually the employer has already picked the person who will get the job from among the trainees and casuals. He/She is obliged by law to go through the appearances of making the job available to all. Racism does apply. I know of a 6'3" Maori transexual who was denied work in aged care because she was considered "inappropriate" for the residents. She would, in fact, have been brilliant. She is kind, gentle, strong, and can sing "Summertime" like a world class opera singer.)

Lucky you. :)

Does it affect the way you look at the racism that occurs in the world?

Do you think it makes you feel more or less concerned about it as an issue?

What would you say or do if someone mistreated you for clearly racist reasons?

What is it about you that prevents people from abusing you?

I bet you would do great using satire...lol

Derogatory names are usually quite weird and many times misinformed.  I was called a wetback once and surprised the person when I told them I couldn't be due to the fact I didn't know how to swim. Surprisingly, they didn't know how to respond. 

I have had two instances both when I lived in Oklahoma City.

First was at the Post Office. There were two clerks at the counter. One left and the Black clerk looked at me next in line and called for the Black woman behind me to cut to the front and he waited on her. Then left and I stood there till the other clerk came out and waited on me.

Second time was at work. I had hired a new Auditor for our Houston office the week before. I invited him up to meet the upper management and other Auditors in our OKC office. When I was showing him around he stopped to talk to the VP. I went down the hall to get two other Auditors to meet him. When I asked them to come down one of them turned and looked at Jim and said OH. Did not dawn on me till a few seconds he was reacting to Jim being Black.

That's interesting. I think I may know your ethnic background. You have experienced a black person disrespecting your place in the line and choosing someone behind you because she was of his own race. That's blatant.

How do you explain it when black people themselves are on the hard end of racism so much of the time?

I don't know if your avatar image is a photo of who you really are, but if so, your look very white, virtually Germanic - do you think the black clerk took you for a white person and was acting out in reverse racism?

OH = Other Half ? Over here that's slang for one's wife or husband. He was referring to someone as the other half of the human race, or the office workforce, or blacks as somehow the other half? I'd have to live there to understand all the nuances - but what I think is interesting about your observation is how such small things can be so commonplace. It means they surround a person's experience every day of their lives, and that kind of thing seeps deep like the air we breathe. It becomes part of us - and how we react becomes part of us. It means that these small things matter.

There's an old story the Sufis tell. Three men travel on a pilgrimage to visit a famous hermit-sage in the desert. Each asks the wise man for a way to relieve him of his burdens. The sage gives them each a large burlap sack and tells them, "Go and find a rock to represent each of your problems." They go their various ways and after a time come back. The first man comes almost bent double carrying a massive boulder on his back. The second man comes straining forwards with several large rocks on his back. The third man comes upright and well-balanced with his load of small pebbles arrayed around his shoulders. "Now," says the sage, "return each rock to where you found it, and leave it there."

But just how can we do that with a lifetime of subtle, malaria infested mosquito bites of racism?