today i am waiting in line at a taco bell, behind a middle eastern woman and her adorable 4 to 5 yr old girl. now thanks to my 17 months in the middle east during the 1st gulf war, i sometimes catch myself having racist type thoughts towards those people. something to do with being mistreated by wealthy Kuwaiti's that ran and hid rather than stayed to fight. it is rather sad all the kuwaiti freedom fighters i met and helped behind the iraqi lines were fabulous, but my memories are marked by the dirtbags. those that would pick fights with us and slap us with there shower shoes etc. okay so you got the quick background to at least see where some of my feelings are generated.
so back to the point, i look at this adorable girl after already making my presumptions about this middle eastern woman. i cant help but smile, she was so cute, and excited about her little kids meal toy, and she was just being a kid... a KID, not a middle eastern kid , but a normal bundle of energy and love, a kid. i couldnt help look at her and think of my own little 5 yr old princess, so here i am smiling at this little girl and her mom. now my little girl would have looked at her and not seen any differences, they would have said hello, talked, giggled, maybe even played for a moment. there racial and religious differences would have never been a second thought.
the first day of school my daughter came home from her 1st day of kindergarten, at dinner she told us of the new friend she made. a girl that sits next to her at there little table, by the name of Jimmea, now if upon reading her name and reflecting if you supposed this little girl was a black girl you would have been right, as i had supposed. now why did that come up, it didnt come up with those two cute little kindergartners in fact i would venture a guess that those two children looked at each other and never saw a difference, what they did see was a little girl just like themselves. in a new environment, maybe a little scared, they saw a little girl and decided to make friends. they didnt see any differences, they saw similarities. little kids are all the same, whether they are white, black, jewish, buddhist, pink or blue. they dont see there differences, they see likenesses.
now if little kids are just the same, why am i not the same as a middle eastern man, or a muslim, or insert any number of possible ethnic, or religious differences. why are we now different in each others eyes. when did we realize that we were different?, and when did it start to matter?, and why?
now mind you i erased those thoughts of the middle eastern woman just as soon as they popped into my head and replaced them with there is a parent of a cute little girl just like i am, and our kids are just alike.
so where and when do these differences take root in our psyche?, and why do we allow it to happen?. why dont we look at that man standing next to us in line and think i bet his life has the same joys and headaches?, the same pleasures?. i bet if you peeled that persons skin standing next to me, or you, i bet there is very, little difference at all. so where did this change occur?, and why? what do we do to make it different?, the way it was meant to be, brothers and sisters of the same planet all trying to make a better place to live for all.
well i for one will vow to be better at looking at people and seeing the similarities and focusing on the similarities rather than our differences. i vow to look at that woman at the taco bell and see a proud parent of a bundle of love and joy... a kid. a cute kid, who thinks taco bell is great. a woman trying to make her way in this harsh world and raise a sweet little girl, protect her from the ugly, and retain her sweet innocence as long as we can. that is my pledge to try and make a difference.
what are your thoughts on the cause?, and how to make yourself better?, in hopes of us all making a little difference to make a bigger positive change.
all little kids are the same!
Dan

 

If I could just be a child once again. If Disneyland was the same again

 

Why are you racist against Paragraphs????? LOL


Honestly, I think it has to do with the loss of innocence

 

the response that this warrants would take pages and pages.

there are just way too many factors to even consider in this.

i am taking an anthropolgy class right now and i am not at all convinced by the subject matter relating to this.

the anthropoligical view point is everyone is the same, but influenced soley by culture. i disagree with that.

i think if there are differences in outer features, there is a high probability of a difference in inner features also, talking how the brain is wired and reacts to various situations. i have debated that with my instructor round after round, he says there is no proof and i counter there is no technology to prove it.

hence why a tiger can never be domesticated no matter how much love and comfort you give it, stuff like that. so people, if applying the evolution thing, could have very reasonably had evolved separtly not only in looks, but in reactions to their enviroment also.

of course now that would cross the taboo racism line and no one ever wants to cross that, also exceptions are not the rule, nor does the rule disallow exceptions.

of course that is me just cloud talking, i could think something different tomorrow.

 

sorry jake i put in or rather thought i used paragraphs, but evidently forgot the indentation. so now i am an anti paragraph ho. so what are you gonna do to help effect a change, make yourself better, which in turn makes it all a little better. come on Wolfie, the deep thinker you are and that is all you've got. Dan

 

Yeah...I couldn't read it. Too hard on the eyes

 

71dusterdan, I agree that we all are the same. We learn our prejeduces. My kids are 19 and 16. We have tried to teach them to see the person for who they are, not what they are. It takes effort to combat undue prejeduce. So far they do well. I was raised around prejeduce and have to be careful.


bf250, I disagree. Society forms our thoughts and reactions. All you have to do is watch small children at play. Outer appearances do not affect their reactions, unless they have be "programmed" by their parents/guardians and surroundings. When younger, I thought like you but now realize different. Experience has taught me much.

Of course to, in the USA, thankfully, we can each have our own opinion and I respect yours.

 

i would beleive that, but my experience has taught me different i guess. from adoptions, to even siamees (sp?) twins, reactions vary to much to atribute it soley to culture, as i said, if that was the case, in an anthropolicical sense, tigers could be domsticated along with every other animal if things were soley due to cultural influences.

children do not have fully developmental brains, so to have them as an example, well, little tigers are cute and cuddley also.

lets say society forms our thoughts and reactions...how? i understand they do have a huge influence, but not enough to blur someone's klnowledge of what is right from wrong.

some with why are there natual born leaders? are there even? if society was the sole influence in everything that means technically we are of all the same intelligence when born also, and we should all have the same reactions but yet kids are born shy, some are born aggressive, nurturing etc.

look at a liter of puppies, which i have been around many and you can see the same thing....the bully of the group, the assertive one, the shyer one, the dumb dog....

society does have an influence and a huge one at that, but i think there is preprograming, most likely genetically related, on how a person reacts to the external enviroment hence why some have the natural tendacy to take charge and others naturally follow along.

oh yes, i am not claiming to be right at all, just out tonite for a friendly debate, and for some reactions.

 

and to throw another angle to it.

i really think many times racism is mistakened for being cultural biased.

now, we all know, with of course all of our exceptions, that everyone in the world fall into typical steretypes associated with their ethnicity.

now, for the sake of my argument, i am excluding the real dumba racist out there.

now, people could easily be cultural biased towards a certain group for many reasons and many good reasons.

for example, we will take the hip hop thing. it is of course not a hard culture, but it is a sort of culture. there are all races in it but it is always associated with blacks and on top of that it is always associated with crime. why? because the stereotypes that have developed from it based and reinforced by facts time and time again.

now, you see a group of blakcs, got their ghetto hip hop routine going, etc etc....now, how are you going to first perceive them? of course by the stereotypes, you are not exactly going to act towards them the same way you would colin powell or rice.

is that racist? of course not. could it be perceived as being racist? of course and very easily because i just stated i hate them even though i never met them, so one would assume it is because of the color of their skin and not the sub culture they are associated with.

of course it would take a whole lot more writing to actually be more specific in my argument, but i hope everyone understands my point.

 

and to add more, i think it is more being biased against a culture than it is to a color or ethinicity.

 

It is, as they say, prejudice -- prejudging based on what you expect to find.
It's also universal -- Hutsis and Tutsis ( or whatever they were), Irish/English, Japanese/Chinese -- everybody hates somebody.

It's no accident that all of the towns in Minnesota were originally divided by
nationality. And they all had bad things to say about the others. '

As somebody alluded to, maybe it's somewhat culture. Only in a different way. For whatever reason, we identify somebody of a certain type as having every bad characteristics we've ever seen from people of that type -- as well as a few that we make up.

It's kind of a surprise, as the original poster noted, when we notice that these folks are basically, just folks. Some are good, some are bad, but they're just folks.

It's a continual struggle to remember that -- and I'm not pretending that it's any different for me.

Awfully heavy for a truck forum!

ford2go

 

To the OP.... Thank you for serving our country, by doing so, you allow us to read and respond honestly to your to your thoughts. We are not supposed to talk about race, religion, or politics in this forum, but with this subject it is hard not to. I am a paramedic from Tn. I have had this occupation for 12 years now. I see people at their worst, when I am expexted to be at my best. I have been in the nicest and the worst neighborhoods imaginable. Most people go about their daily lives and never could imagine how the majority of people in a metropolitan city live. From not having a home to, at best, section 8 government subsidized housing makes up about 80% of our city's landscape.

Having said that, I will say this.....The line is drawn by race. This is not a racist remark, only factual evidence that you can come and see with your own eyes. I believe that stereotypes are a necesary evil in my job. We call it profiling, but we still use it. There are some parts of our city we wont even dare to go without a police escort due to the potential of violence. Why do we do this you ask? We have learned from our past and we cover our own A$$. We made #10 on the national violent crimes list just this week. That really sucks for a town of only @ 150,000 residents.

I really do think that we are born innocent and are taught through social means that we are diffrent. History speaks for itself. There are alot of biggots in this country, but there are a lot of gangbangers as well. I am neither, I just wanted you to know that...

I try everyday, as I go along with my work, to keep my mind level. I was taught as a child that every one deserves your respect, no matter who they are. I still think that way today, with one exception....I will treat you fair and equal, but I will not respect you until you earn it.

Society has taught me that.

Thank you again to the OP for your SERVICE and for making me think.

 

Here's a funny little story for you...I was watching a friends kids, one about 6, the other maybe 8...Well I took them to Walmart and we were walking around, and a black family started coming toward us. Now I should tell you that my area is about 85-90% white and I would bet that the kids haven't seen many if any black people in real life. Well they both just stop in their tracks and started staring, and I didn't know what to do, it was kinda awkward because it was very obvious what they were doing...

What do you do in a situation like that???

Tim

 

here's my take on this.first off you said when you were in line and run across the middle eastern mom and lil girl you thought back to when you were in iraq ok,you said they treated you like crap.that my friend is a start of why you think its bad not like a certain culture. think about when some race/group does something to make us po'ed at them we have a tendency to group all of them together and dislike all of that race/group. i mean how many folks arnt real crazy about mexicans cuzz of all the illegall boarder jumping goin on. i know i do every time i see a mexican i think hmm wonder if they got papers to be here,no bigie. i dont say nuttin to then just a quik lil thought that goes threw my mind. or how many time ya go the the city and ya see a bunch of black kids bumpin in there car come driving up and ya wonder hmm this could be a drive by and ya have a tendency to kinda watch real close and get ready to duck. we hear this stuff every day on tv,radio how this culture/group does this or that.

 

Tim, That is something that you as a parent will have to decide for yourself. You have the freedom to raise your kids as you see fit. You can thank the OP for that and the ones that came before him.

I would take the oppourtunity to teach them that everyone is created equal, and that they are just like them except for the skin color. Society will teach them the difference if you do not, and we all know how that will turn out. MY .02