Gotta Be Careful

I guess I am not politically correct enough in my speech and I have to be careful of that.  I hate having to stop and think before I make a wise crack.  I don't want to hurt any one's feelings.

I don't think I have a racist bone in my body.  Growing up out in the rural farm area, there were no other races to be racist about.  People were judged on the way they lived their lives.  Honest people or dishonest people.  Pretty plain and simple.

Growing up, I don't think anyone is my family was racist.  After all, my Grandmother had a Japanese man working for her during WWII.  He was a professional chicken sexer and came every Sunday to determine the sex of the baby chicks that we had just pulled from the incubators, and before the chicks were sold.  None of our neighbor's had a problem with him either.

His entire family, who were born in the US and all citizens, but who lived in California, were put into interment camps by President Roosevelt, but he wasn't bitter about it.    It was as it was.

When I was older, we had men from Flint come out to the farm.  They wanted permission to train their coon dogs back in the woods.  If asked, we would have called them "Negros".  They were great guys.  

They never trampled down a fence back in the woods.  They never damaged anything.  Not like some of the white guys who came out and wanted to hunt in the woods.  After my Daddy saw the careless way they acted and hunted, he quit allowing them that privilege.  If asked, we would have called them, "City People", which was not a nice connotation back then.  

My Daddy had a bad experience with a couple of neighbor boys who had moved out from the city. They wanted him to show them how to repair a wagon.  He did.

After they left, he found most of his tools missing.  The tools were laying on the ground under the wagon they had repaired.  "City people!  They'll steal anything that isn't nailed down," was his comment.

After I was married and moved out, my Uncle told my Daddy about a man he knew, who knew a man, who knew another man who had been living with his niece and nephew.  The niece and nephew were moving away and the man needed a place to stay and work.

Daddy hired him and moved him into a trailer on the farm.  The man could not write and he barely spoke English.  "I just dumb Pollock," he always said.

He was a hard worker and a very sweet man.  We called him Pete, because that was his name.  When he died many years later, with no family around, we had a funeral and he is buried on our family plot in the nearby cemetery.

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BUT--phrases or comments made back in the old days, that elicited no response or carried no offense then, now do.

On Face Book the other day, a friend had posted a video showing a Black Labrador dog running around and around and around a tree.  Round and round and round.  I commented, "He reminds me of Little Black Sambo", but before I hit the "post" button, I reminded myself that it was not PC to say that.

 Didn't we all grow up with the story about Little Black Sambo?  He and that tiger ran around and around that palm tree until the tiger turned into butter.  The little boy lived in Africa.  His skin was black.   He was cute and I thought his name was cute.  Not so cute nowadays.

When I was a little kid, I had a Hopalong Cassidy cap pistol/holster set, a black cowboy hat and vest and a pair of cowboy boots.  I used to get on my bike and ride up and down the road, shooting (imaginary) Indians that were hiding in the bushes and going to ride out and scalp me.

My Mother also made me an Indian princess dress out of burlap, a beautiful headband with a feather in the back, bought me a pair of beaded moccasins, and also built me a 10 feet tall Tee Pee out of canvas.  I had an Indian blanket in the Tee Pee and I'd play in there all day.

One of my favorite things were the cardboard dividers that came in the Shredded Wheat box.  All about Injun Joe and how to make a stove out of an old Crisco can.  Or how to make a whistle out of reeds found in the roadside ditch.  Or how to make a halter to tie my big dog up to the sled or wagon to get a ride.  My Mother and I spent almost one whole day making a Wikkiup, for that big dog to haul around.

I still love anything Indian Native American. I have had that doll since I was 8 years old.  I watched as those sand paintings were made.  The lady who made them was such an artisan!

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I didn't think any of these scenarios were racist or prejudicial.  As I ventured out into my adult life, I had no prejudices that I knew of.  I met my first Negro African American, when I attended college at age 24.  Her name was Lorena and we shared a gym locker in Phys Ed. class.  

A strange conversation that first day.  All the other girls got their lockers and put away their clothes to change into shorts and T-shirts. I asked Lorena if I could share with her.

She said, "Are you sure?"

"Sure.  Unless you don't want too."

"No one wants to share with me," she said.

"Why?"

"Because they think niggers stink and I will stink up their clothes."

I was speechless.  She was the only Black, Black American, African American, girl in the class.  We became friends, although that was the only class we shared.

<back in 1964 the term "Blacks" was still used>

We met in the Cafeteria for lunch every day.  I sat with her friends.  She teased me because I ate my Muskmelon with a fork.  I teased her because she called is Mushmelon.  "It's not MuShmelon," I'd say.
It's MusKmelon."  We jokingly argued about that.

Then she said, "Let's just call it Cantaloupe.  You eat it with a fork and I'll pick it up and eat it like your "possed" to."

"Huh?  Cantaloupe?  I thought that was the green kind of melon."

She just shook her head at the uneducated, farm girl I was.

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Then I met two guys in my Sociology class.  One was sort of light brown color, with jet black, straight hair.  He had a very aquiline nose and broad forehead.  I thought he was probably an Indian.  The other kid was almost purple he was so dark.  He was kind of small and his speech was fast and quick.  I could barely understand him.  We used to meet in the Student Union every afternoon for an hour between classes.  One day, we were joined by a blonde guy.  He was very handsome.  His name was Len.  Then a beautiful girl joined us, she had olive colored skin .

We looked liked the United Nations, sitting there. 

Over the course of time, discussing our Sociology class, and life in general, I looked at the guy I thought was Indian and said, "Are you an Indian?"  Before I could answer, the kid who was purple black said, "No.  I'm Indian, he's Native American."

"Huh?"

Then the blonde guy said, "I'm German."

"Oh.  So am I," I replied.

"Yeah, but I'm a  German Jew."

"Huh?"

Then the girl piped up and said, "I'm Lebanese."

<Oh, she must be a Catholic, I thought.  What did they call them?  Chaldean Christian?>

"I'm a Lebanese Jew."

"Huh?"

They kind of looked at me and all I could think of saying was, "Oh--I'm just a country farm girl and I don't know anything!" 

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I grew to love every single one of those kids.  Every day we met in the Union for that glorious hour.

I learned that the Indian had grown up on a reservation up near Midland Michigan. He was part of the Isabella tribe. When little, he had been forced into a white school to be "indoctrinated."  The purple Indian was from India. His father was a professor at the college.  He was Catholic, instead of Hindu.  The Lebanese girl's family had fled because of religious persecution from the Arabs, even though---she was Arabic!  The blonde German had grown up in Germany during WWII.  He had the scars on his legs to prove it.  A beating, with chains, by a Nazi youth group.  His family fled just as the persecution of Jews was beginning.

And---there I was.  Just a white  pinkish colored farm girl who had never gone through anything scary or ever been persecuted.

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What I've learned, doing genealogy?  ALL of our ancestor's have been persecuted in some way.  Whether because of their religious beliefs, or ethnicity, or just because of where they lived.   AND--every single one of them had the same desire.  To make a better life for their descendants.  

Every.  Single.  One.

We all have different ethnicity's in our DNA.  We think we are, "German, English."  or,  "Catholic, Protestant, Jewish"  and then we find out, waaaaaay back in time, our 10 Great Grand Father married a Native American.  Or our Protestant 9th Great Grand Father married an Irish Catholic girl.  Perhaps, like a guy I met once, his 3rd Great Grand Father (white) married an African American girl.  There have been wars fought over religion and ethnicity and yet...somehow people ignored that in the name of love.

We really are all the same on the inside!  We have absolutely no reason to be biased against any other human being.  However, I do think we are allowed to judge individuals on how they live their lives and how they act.  

I do not discriminate against any ethnicity, religion, creed, lifestyle or political leanings.  I have ALL in my family, or have known all.  But...I do want to spend my time with those that are loving, kind, gentle and honest.  If they aren't, I don't want to spend time with them.  So...I guess I am judgmental.

Be they white, black, yellow, tan or red.  Be they Catholic, Protestant, Jew or Muslim or my Wiccan neighbor.  Be they Conservative or Liberal.  Be they NRA members or anti-gun.  Be they straight or gay or somewhere in between.  Be they mentally whole or slightly over the edge.  Or even those "City People"!

I just have to be careful and more PC and more sophisticated and not respond like the uneducated, naive, farm girl that still lurks inside my head. LOL