Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Our Dirty Little Secret

Last night an acquaintance was talking to a bunch of us about a business trip she recently took to Mississippi. She’d gone on the trip with a group of colleagues and she was one of only a few white people in the group. Most of them were black.

(Is it bad to call African Americans “black” now? I have a hard time keeping up with the current favored terminology and I don’t want to offend. Twenty or thirty years ago, “black” was preferred. It makes sense to me. I’m white. Dark-skinned people are black. Though, of course, most African Americans are more of a warm brown color and I’m more of a pinkish beige color. Anyway…I digress…)

Apparently, this woman and her colleagues drew quite a few stares down in Mississippi. People just did not like seeing these white people walking along the street chatting away with African American people.

Most of us, hearing our acquaintance’s story, did the usual ‘tut-tut’-ing and murmuring about how bad that was and how unbelievable it was to us that prejudice of that kind still exists. Basically, the sentiment was: What’s wrong with those people in the deep south??

I heard one of our group though, an African American man, quietly say something to the effect of: You have no idea. It’s all around here, too–all the time.

Well… he should know, right?

I guess up here in the northern big city we’re just not quite so crass about how we display our prejudices in public. It’s declasse to be openly biased against African Americans. I’ve been surprised, though, by how comfortable many people are with prejudice against Asian Americans.

As an example, a few years ago I reported a neighbor to the ASPCA because she was mistreating a puppy she’d got for her kids. To make a long story short, the ASPCA went to the neighbor’s house and rescued the dog. The dog ended up with a new, wonderful home. Happy ending to the story, right? After the dog’s rescue, though, the ASPCA lady called to let me know how it had gone and said, “You should have told me they were Asians. They’re just the worst!”

I was stunned. In retrospect, I wish I had said something, but I was just so amazed. It had never occurred to me that anyone could possibly consider the neighbor’s being Asian as a factor. I mean…people who mistreat dogs come in all colors, right? Really, though, you hear these kinds of throw-away snipes against Asian people all the time. Snotty comments about Indian folks, nasty remarks about Korean folks. If people are saying this kind of crap about Asians right out loud, I suppose it’s not all that unlikely they’re thinking similar things about African Americans and just aren’t saying it.

So that’s our dirty little secret. Racial prejudice isn’t gone up here, it’s just expressed a little more “tastefully”.

That’s probably no secret at all to the people who are on the receiving end of it.