Quote From: mkw2004A private telephone conversation, should have been just that "private"! What a father says to a child in private, even if it's to emphasize a specific situtation using words that will get through to that child, even if they are grown adults..is THEIR business. Yes! The words that were used were degrading and they were a poor choice of words at that, but add frustration, anger etc. to the formula and you have slurs against a race/creed/ or life style.
I see more and more the "fear" of people who are not like us;every where. Growing up, I lived in an all white community but there was still predjudice. Often I heard slurs made about Italians, Irish and German people and it was confusing to say the least because I just saw people as PEOPLE! I decided at a young age to continue accepting people for whom they are, as long as they were good, kind people.
By the time I was in High School, only then did I get to meet and befriend teenagers , who's parents came from another country. Only then did I meet black American's, even then not knowing anything about gay's, met them also.Did I call them names or was I afraid of them NO, they were my friends.
Knowing nationalities was a gourmet feast! I learned that real Italian food was better than what my mother made, that there was something called Kilbasi and Perigois etc.This international feasting changed the way I ate for the rest of my life.It was also a learning experience and in my travels, breaking bread with a new culture was my way of learning about the people.
My father grew up in Panama as a child, when the USA was building the Panama Canal, his father was an engineer. He talked about his time there with love and reverance for the natives, he reffered to them as colored, as many of the natives were mixed white and black.So, I never heard the N word used in our household.
Fast forward, one day I asked my father how to get to a place in Brooklyn by train. In turn he remarked..why do you want to go there? Well, I was invited for lunch by my friend. He said..that's an all colored neighborhood! Yes, dad, my friend is colored, so what difference does that make? It's NOT safe and I don't want you to go. Needless to say I went and had a great time and was unscathed.What made me preplexed about my fathers concern was how loveingly he talked about his growing up with colored and now he didn't want me to have a black friend?
It seems that Americans have forgotten how this country was settled by the Dutch. English etc. The English gentry were sent to America to start plantations, suppling cotton to Europe. At first prisoners and indentured servants were sent but the plantations grew and need more people to work. Slavery was know since Biblical times and natives of Africa were easy prey. They were captured like animals and brought to the South, sold as slaves to the palantation owners. Over two hundred years more than 20 million black slaves were killed one way or the other! More died than the Holocaust of WW 2.
Then what about the American Native......they were also slaughterd by the thousands and they were here FIRST! Out of FEAR, they were killed off and the US Goverment contained them under deplorable conditions, instead of learning about WHO and WHAT they were as a people.
Yes, we call our selves Americans from the Greatest Country in the WORLD, BUT if another human is different from us we , out of FEAR call them names. Sounds childish doesn't it?
Insead of using expleatives when talking about something we fear, this country should STOP SHOPPING and start TALKING to each other, to find out HOW the other person thinks, feels about the human condition in America.After all we are ALL in this together !
Maggie
You said your father said the neighborhood was all colored and dangerous. I didn't hear " I don't want you to have a black friend". The nieghborhood being dangerous was probably a fact not a racist statement. People need to learn the difference between facts and racism. If the someone says there is more crime in the black nieghborhoods that is a fact not a racist statement. There are statistics that back these statements up. If people don't like the facts they need to do something to change them. Start in your own homes.
From a celebrity’s controversial meltdown caught on tape to nooses cropping up around the country, Dr. Phil and Bishop T.D. Jakes tackle tough racial issues. First up, Dog the Bounty Hunter spewed slurs in a phone conversation with his son, Tucker, and used the N-word repeatedly when referring to Tucker’s black girlfriend, Monique. Monique’s mother, Linda Shinnery, joins the Dr. Phil show via satellite and says she was appalled by Dog’s tirade. Should the reality TV star lose his job over a private conversation? Civil rights activist Al Sharpton, rapper Master P, and BET correspondent Jeff Johnson weigh in. Then, nooses, a symbol of hatred for African-Americans, are cropping up more and more across the country – from Jena, Louisiana to Columbia University in New York. Najee Ali, founder and co-director of Project Islamic Hope, shares his views on empowering the black community and combating stereotypes. Don’t miss this intense debate about racism and sensitivity in America, and find out how you can educate your children. Join the discussion.
