Category: prejudice

Knee-Jerk Response

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 10 Comments

Today was a step into the Twilight Zone. Between being spacey from pain meds for my dental work yesterday to trying to finish up cleaning a house in another city to driving to the DNV to find it closed two days in a row, I have been feeling quite disjointed.

Then today happened.

Walking into the police department (where the DNV was), a van was honking at me. I ignored it and went inside. Closed. Came back outside and the van was pulled into the parking lot across the street. I pulled my car out of the parking spot and noticed the man from that van heading towards me.

There was nobody else around. This middle-aged, balding man with a mask was walking towards my car. 

I, in my infinite wisdom, thought, “Oh no. Here comes a terrorist coming to kill me.”

“Did you honk at me?” I asked. Flight or fight. Flight or fight. I am too chicken to fight, too self-conscious to drive away. The man came up to my car. My window was wide open (I have no A/C in this car.)

“Can you help me please? I cannot find this place,” he said in a heavy foreign accent. More terrorist feed, like tempting a kid with candy before snatching them up and disappearing. 

I put my car into park. He held out his phone to me. On it was a picture of a business card of a financial

something-or-other. The address was one I wasn’t familiar with. I should have said sorry, no, and took off.

But instead I said, “I’m from a different town. But let me check my GPS on my phone and see where this is.” So I did just that. 

Turns out he was just on the wrong side of Main Street. “It’s over next to the library,” I offered. 

“You know where that is?” he asked. I nodded. “Then will you take me there? Please?”

So now what do I do? What do you think I did?

“Sure,” I said.

This man thanked me and blessed me and blessed my family. He wished me long life and blessings. He followed my car down the street, across Main Street, and, turning in from of the library, I pulled over, pointing him to the building across the street. He thanked me and blessed me and blessed my family again. I blessed him too.

And I felt like such a heel.

I hate that knee-jerk reaction when someone different than you talks/looks/approaches you. It’s a generational thing, to be sure. From our parents to us, racial discrimination and judgment is real. We don’t necessarily feel that prejudice, but somewhere in our past we’ve been exposed to it and our automatic flight or fight instinct turns on. And the news and social media and events of the past few days hasn’t helped.

I was ashamed I was afraid of this man. Yes, people do get murdered or attacked in small towns everywhere. But the actual percentage of it being you is so small that the odds of someone attacking you in particular are practically nill. 

And it’s more important to help than to run. At least it is to me. I can’t be afraid of the whole world my whole life. What will be is what will be. 

I am glad I helped the man find his building. I am glad he blessed me and my family. I blessed him and his family, too.

I wish the rest of the world could learn a lesson from this.

You Are Not Your Conditioning

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 11 Comments

thTruth time is often embarrassment time. Sometimes it’s an uncomfortable time. But often it is necessary time. So here goes.

This morning I read an article on ESPN.com about the Minnesota Vikings investigating a confrontation where one fan demanded to know if another fan was a refugee.  http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14332031/minnesota-vikings-review-refugee-confrontation-fan. 

With all the bombings and shootings taking place recently, I knew it would only be a matter of time before knuckleheads started beating on anyone of a different skin color.

The truth is even more upsetting.

I went to a football game on Sunday; our group stands around on the first level, watching the teams warm up, before we go to the nosebleed seats. As I stood there, this “dark-skinned” man came up beside me, and the first thing…the FIRST THING…I thought was…is he a terrorist?

Turned out his wife came around soon, and they took pictures of each other with the field and players in the background, laughing and posing and having a good time. They took off to seats unknown, and I was instantly ashamed of what I thought.

I had no idea of his nationality, where he lived, what he did for a living. But with the media pumping fear into all of us all the time, I slipped into the same mud millions of others do. I judged a person by the color of his skin.

And I am ashamed.

I know better, I believe better. Yet years of reinforcement of prejudice from all around me had me acting like Pavlov’s dog. Bring in a trigger and your mind instantly goes to the same place. Every time. Now, the guy in the above article was an idiot; he confronted the guy openly, became unruly, and security had to be called. This is what the fellow said:

“…somewhere in his mind, all he saw was a terrorist, based on nothing more than the color of my skin. He was white, and I wasn’t. He didn’t see anything else. He didn’t know that I have lived in Minnesota for the past four years, that I was born and raised in New York and that the words ‘Never Forget’ may mean more to me than to him.  He didn’t know that when I went home and my children jumped on top of me and asked ‘How was the game?’ that I’d be holding back tears as I told them about racism instead of touchdowns.”

Is that what the world has become? A world of suspicious anti-terrorist spotters?

Yes, we have to be  aware of what’s going on around us. I learned to be alert and watch what was going on when I worked in downtown Chicago many years ago. Keep going on with your business, but don’t get lost in your daydreams until you get where you’re going.

But this terrorist threat is hurting a lot of decent people. People who keep their religion to themselves. People who work beside you and shop beside you and are as frightened of someone gunning them down as we are.

Yet extremists go far beyond stupidity and want to ban all refugees from entering the country. Want to do triple checks on their backgrounds and family trees. Why not corral them all and put them in pens like the U.S. did to the Japanese after the war?

The original point of this post was that I let my mind go to the deepest, most embarassing part of my psyche and I prejudged someone with absolutely zero facts. I admit I sometimes do that when I’m around African Americans and Mexicans and other ethnicities.  And I am ashamed.

I am spooked by weird people and giant people and people who talk too loud.

I shouldn’t be spooked by people who just came to cheer the Bears at the game just like I did.

Be aware of your knee jerk reactions. Maybe you can’t stop them, but you can at least realize them for what they are. They say you are not your conditioning — let’s hope that’s true.

And anyway — I’m sure those people who were taking pictures of themselves at the game share my sentiments about football in general and the Bears in particular. (Insert head smack here…)