Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood in New England, I was pretty much sheltered from non-white people. In fact, the only Black, Asian, or Indians I ever really knew is what I saw on the television, or saw driving through the city – until one day.
My parents always watched the news, and we kids had to suffer through it for a half a hour before we could watch our programming. I remember hearing about racial desegregation, but as a young boy, I had no clue as to what any of it meant.
One cool September morning, one of those little mini school busses pulled up to the curb of my elementary school. Everybody watched as eight black kids got off the bus and became the first children of color ever to be enrolled into my school.
These eight new students were the first black folks many of us have ever come in contact with. It was also the introduction of racial difference into Prospect Hills Elementary School. There were many trials for all of us during the next decade or so until we all graduated high school and went our own ways into the world.
I like to think I’m not a racist, but I can’t lie to myself. Racism is a learned behavior, and my father and the adults in our community had little liking for people of other ethnic backgrounds other than our own; thus our education began.
It took many many years for me to unlearn much of this ugly behavior. Yet, no matter what I do, I know a residual of this malignancy still crawls up from my unconscious when I’m under extreme stress under certain circumstances.
Today we have the internet, a global village that brings people from all over the world right into our homes. The focus of this article is to share a positive experience of mine with you, that I believe both helped me unlearn a tad more of that lurking residue, and perhaps lessens racial prejudice in today’s world.
I have been using the internet since 1992. I learned quickly the use of IRC, news groups, forums, instant messengers, internet duplex voice communication, and now blogging. Never could I have the experience of knowing so many interesting and diverse people without the modern internet as a mode of global communication.
I used to frequent a site containing the typical list of chats. Over the course of several years, I had formed a few decent online relationships with some of the regulars, kinda like what goes on here at JU. Anyway, as it goes it came a point where 4 of us came together for a first time meeting at Starbucks. I new instantly who each person was as they rolled into Starbucks. One of the women for whom I had spent many hours in intellectual conversation (or as close as I can come to it seeing my mental incapacity), walked in, and guess what, she was black.
The ol’ deep-rooted prejudice began to creep in, and I started to feel a bit…weird I guess is a fair way to put it. But as I automatically rose to give her a hug, the feeling disappeared!! Now I have to admit, it seemed odd to me, as I imagined the closer I got to this woman, the stronger the weirdness would become. Honestly, after that fleeting moment when I first recognized her, my prejudice seemed to have simply vanished all together.
Now I’m not claiming that I was “cured” of my prejudice, but ever since then, that weird feeling comes upon me so much less than ever before.
I figure its because we had communicated without actually seeing each other so often to the point that we knew each other well. To be perfectly frank, at that point in my life, I don’t think I would have gotten close enough to really know this lady had we first met in person without the chatting online beforehand.
It might seem silly to some, but I think the internet made me realize something at a subconscious level, and may have partially reversed that ugly learned behavior I had gained from my childhood; a miracle as far as I was concerned.