Everyone knows that Calgary's businesses are in dire need of employees, there is an unknowingly high recession of workers in the city, which is ironic considering the high percentage of homeless people that live in it. It has even come to the point where some businesses have hired out of the city, overseas in fact, and have brought people/immigrants in to work for them.
Thinking about this made me recount an event that happened to me last summer in Kensington. I don't know if anyone remembers the Neo-Nazi group that hung around in Centennial Park and Kensington over the summer, but they caused quite a spectacle. One day, they formed a large group and decided to march down the streets of Kengsington with large flags splashed with messages of racism like, "White is Right" and the Nazi symbol on them. True story folks. I was there.
Now to add more detail to this event, I'm a filipino, and the friend that I was with is African. When we were just sitting there drinking coffees on the bench, watching this all go down, something happened that I have never exprienced before. My first brush with racism. The group marched passed us to their protest spot, the female that was in the group gave us both the worst look that I have ever gotten in my life. She glared with such zeal... It was actually scary.
They were yelling a lot of racist things such as "White is Right", and eventually a group of people that were across the road protesting for them to stop, and that racism was wrong. There became such a traffic hazard that eventually the police came and disrupted the group. It was also covered by the media and a reporter asked one of the post-Nazi members why they were doing this. He simply replied, "Immigrants are taking our rightful jobs as Canadians. They should just work in their own country"
So contrived, I know. Also quite ironic considering Calgary's economic situation.
Has anyone else ever experienced racism?
~Rachel R
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7 comments:
Yes, but over the internet instead and for not any other reason than to get a rise out of me after finding out what my ethnicity was. There's no real point in going on a long rant about the flawed logic of any supremist argument, but boy does that type of ignorance piss me off.
Interestingly enough, there's a young SHARP group (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice), a category of skin heads that I previously had no knowledge about, that hangs out in Kensington as well. Makes for an interesting social dynamic so close to the school.
I think racism seems to land in the same realm as that idea of the "ideal natural body" thats a common theme in class. Its existence is dependent on two of our worst qualities, ignorance, and blind faith.
Connor w.
Not myself, but as a child I remember trying to stick up for friends whose parents were from Pakistan. I remember having no clue what to say in their defense, except to insult the bullies right back about having white skin (which must have looked absurd, being that I'm also caucasian). It really is worrying to imagine where those kids got the idea to treat others that way, but drawing on what Connor said, a child is a perfect example of ignorance.
Actually, I don't think the its the ignorant kids so much as the ignorant parents, and a generally ignorant community. Kids don't learn that sort of thing out of thin air. Kids are generally innocent, it's nasty when they grow up and don't bother learning any better.
-Connor
tabula rasa (Latin: scraped tablet or clean slate) refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.
Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favor the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of one's personality, social and emotional behavior, and intelligence.
Also look at John Locke
-Brittany L.
When I was in grade school, which was a Catholic school in a predominantly white working-class neighbourhood, we were taught about how racism was wrong. This largely consisted of reading books about the racial injustices against blacks in the American south. This was my first real exposure to the idea of racism, (beyond a classmate telling my best friend Mags that she should go out on a date with Henry C_____ because they were both Chinese.) and it left me with the impression that as a white person, people would automatically think that I was racist, because all of these books and films painted all of their white characters that way. I still haven't totally shaken that fear, but I've learned to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I choose to operate under the assumption that if I'm not judging someone based on their race, they won't judge me based on mine.
As far as the origina question about experiencing racism directly, the only major incident that springs to mind occurred in grade 7, when Mags and I were walking home from school in Feburary and some jerk in a white pick-up with a confederate flag license plate deliberately swerved into a mud puddle to splash us. We were absolutely soaked and freezing. I'm not entirely sure if it was racially motivated or if the guy was an equal opportunity a-hole, but it was still an unsettling experience.
In my experience, any nation has racism problems. However, white guys did a good job to put it on table, discuss it and against it hard. From this point of view, "white is right".
Shenghao Xi
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