She's BAAAACK!!!

I haven't posted in a while but that does not mean things are not on my mind.

Right now, racism and it's ugly nature is sitting at the forefront of my brain. I work in a predominately white company and county. By "White," I mean a very, very specific definition of the word. At the risk of sounding like many White racists, I have plently of friends who are white. :^) However, my friends are white, in that is the color of their skin, not "White," as in culturally I pretend to be open to diversity but I really want all you coloreds to keep your place beneath me.

I never met White people until I moved to this Red state. When I started blogging I knew one day I'd have to write something about my experiences with racism. This may be a series, in fact, I can't see how it won't be so it is best to start with one of my first experiences...and there are plenty.

I attended the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a double major in English and Mass Communications. The very naive me (in regards to race relations anyway) had no idea why a particular White girl was consistantly rude towards me. I don't mention her name not to save her embarassment but simply because I can't remember it. I could not figure it out for years. Being rude is one thing but to actively sabotage my efforts at education is another.

We had the misfortune to end up in the same communications class working on the same group project...a study of high school culture. Our group was large so we split it into three sub-groups. I was on a group with her and another white girl. Long story short, when I made an attempt to contribute to the group project, she regularly shut me down saying my contribution would not work. Even worse than her was the other girl who would sit silently while this happened. She is the worse offender because people like that sat quietly while Nazis killed Jews.

This experience was stranger still. This was a school assignment but the two girls "required" me to drive to their homes in order to work on the project. I had what is popularly called a "POS" car and really did not want to drive to BFE every other night and then pray my car would not stall going home late. They sure as hell were not going to offer me a sleep over, nor would they come retrieve me if I got stranded...BTW, no cell phones in the early 90s so I would have been stuck.

I refused to jump through their hoops but why should I have had to? Why do Whites tell people of color to work hard to get ahead and then stand in the way of that progress. It's because they really don't want people of color to get ahead. These girls would have been perfectly happy to see me drop out of school. They never respected my intelligence and probably never will. These White people are WORSE than the Klan. At least you know where you stand with Klansmen.