Tag: racism

roadway with end racism now title in town
bullying, cancel culture, free speech, parenting, Politics

Redefining Racism

Katrina Russell

racist

noun

  1. A person who believes a particular race is superior to others.
  2. a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others

That has been the standard definition since it was a thing. It is how slave owners felt. It is how KKK members felt, and much to Whoopi Goldberg’s chagrin, it is how the Nazis felt. Racism has always been about one group feeling superior to another group.

Racism is not when someone points out differences between groups. In fact, differences between groups should be celebrated not treated like an insult. It’s not racism when someone from a different group does, says, wears, or otherwise “appropriates” something from another group. If the person doing, saying, wearing, or what have you was racist they would think that the “others” group was inferior and NOT “appropriate” their culture. I guarantee you no Nazi was “appropriating” Jewish culture.

Racism is also not pointing out how different cultures have different values, traditions, and ideas. Such as some cultures value education, some cultures value religion, some cultures value violence and scamming the system. Racism is, however, claiming that someone from a particular race is unable to break away from their culture and adopt different values, and that the only way anyone from one group could possibly succeed is to either lower the standards or by way of help from the “better, more advanced race”. That’s just full-on racism in it’s true form.

Today people who believe the second version are doing their best to make those who understand the first version are the true racists. So, for instance, one group says, “Society has rules. They are rules that, as a society we have found better the life of everyone involved. If you would like to better your life, then just follow these simple rules and you too will see that your life is better.”. These rules have come from centuries of seeing how different societies all over the world have succeeded and bringing them all together to create something new.

The United States is a great example of this set of rules. They are considered “White” rules because the majority of people in the US are white, but in reality, a lot of these rules come from many cultures not formally considered “white” by traditional standards. Ironically, the racial groups not previously considered white actually can be found to be more successful, because traditionally they place a bigger value on family and tend to live together and support each other longer. In fact, “white” used to be only British people. As white only became a race in segregated America at a time when the dominant race was British. Even Italians, Irish, Germans were all different races in all other terms. But with segregation it was decided that there needed to be a term that separated ex slaves from the common citizenry. Thus “White” was born.

Now “white” is used as a synonym for success. Anyone who becomes successful is now either considered white or “trying to be white”. So, for instance, Asians are now on the hierarchy stage of being white adjacent because they are one of the highest earning groups in American society. They get into elite colleges at a higher rate as well, therefore a cap had to be put on the number of Asians allowed into the elite colleges because of course it wasn’t fair to those whose cultures don’t put hard work and success on the list of values to attain. And let’s not forget any black person that does rise to success and pay tribute to hard work and perseverance… they just “want to be white”.

Now it is the fault of the hard working that those who don’t work hard don’t succeed, because “everyone knows ‘those people’ aren’t capable of hard work”. This is the crap that’s being taught in schools. It’s being taught that one group is oppressed by the system because it is set up for those capable of hard work. The Smithsonian came out with a breakdown of “white supremacist” which included things like hard work and being on time. Groups are pushing to remove tests and having to answer questions correctly because it oppresses a whole group of people not capable of such feats. There are groups of people pushing to stop police from arresting those who steal because they’re not capable of doing real work to earn goods. Today Biden put aside $30 million to give crack pipes out to inner city black people in the name of equity. Because that’s what “those people” really want. There’s a reason why the new Black Heroes are all violent criminals, and people like Dr King and Fredrick Douglas are having their statues torn down.

Racism is alive and well in this country, but we have to call it out when we see it, and we have to use words properly. Racism is not understanding that racial/ethnic groups are different and have different values, traditions, and ideas. Racism is believing that people from one racial/ethnic group is incapable of being successful simply because of their racial/ethnic group.

stone statue of leader of civil rights movement in washington dc
Love

Why we honor MLK

Katrina Russell

Today is a day to honor Rev Dr Martin Luthor King Jr. This is a very important day, and it is very significant that we honor and remember all of his accomplishments, as well as his message of peace.

There were many civil rights leaders of that time, but he is the only one with a day. Some consider this racist. Those people probably are the same people who think pancake syrup is racist. What makes a person worth an honor and a remembrance, like a day or a statue, is not just that they aim for a particular goal, but the way that they go about doing it.

MLK was all about peace. Peaceful resistance, and love. Love for all fellow men. He was not looking to elevate anyone over anyone else. He was looking to accomplish equality among all individuals. He did this by reminding people not to hurt others but to embrace them. To be allies and friends. He wanted his kids to walk with the white kids not against them or above them.

We honor MLK because of the accomplishments that he gave to this country, and the hardships he and his family endured for doing so. We do not honor MLK because he was a perfect man. This is an important distinction. This is something that some people have forgotten. No one is perfect. No one is without sin. Everyone is a product of their time, and a slave to their vices, and Dr King was no exception.

All over the country people are tearing down statues of freedom fighters because they disagree with something or another about the person. The person is not the point. The person is a symbol of the movement. Just as Dr King was a symbol of the non-violent civil rights movement that touched the hearts of people not just all over the country, but all over the world.

There are not statues to Dr King for being a philanderer. There are not statues to Dr King for being a rapist. There are not statues of Dr King for being a Communist. Though he was all of those things. He was a person. A person who had demons. A person who was a product of his time. A person that did unspeakable things behind closed doors, but who still brought a message of hope and peace to the world.

Never meet your heroes. It’s an old expression usually used now to talk about movie stars and athletes, but its origin is unclear. Everyone wants to attribute it to the person they first heard say it. Which in and of itself is ironic as they are putting the quote to the person they admire, but the point remains. No one is perfect. No one is the angel we know in our imagination. Dr King is no different.

It is amazing and wonderful that Dr King has a day to remember him. It is unbelievable that it happened so quickly considering he was fighting for the right to be treated as an equal, and less that 20 years after his death he was granted a Federal Holiday. In fact, other than Columbus, he is the only individual with a Federal Holiday named after him. We used to have Washington’s birthday, but that has since been converted to Presidents Day and now they all share it. Similar to Veterans Day.

Rev Dr Martin Luthor King is the only American to ever have a day named and celebrated for him, and he had a horrible history of sex crimes and treating women horribly. Does that mean we should take away his day? Does that mean we should rename all of the MLK Blvds all over the country? Or does that mean that we understand that he wasn’t perfect, but we honor him for the accomplishments and the amazing things that he did do? I say the latter, and I say the same for all of our other people in history. We don’t honor Jefferson and Washington for owning slaves, and we don’t honor MLK for his sins either. Let thee without sin cast the first stone. Until then, Let’s remember the good we’ve all done.

bullying, parenting, Politics

I was told that I’m racist

Katrina Russell

So I was recently informed that I am racist. I found this to be a very perplexing statement given that I was told that I was racist specifically because I don’t care about race. Has the world gone mad?

I was born about a decade after The Civil Rights Act. I was raised in a small town. It was prominently white, but there were definitely people of color mixed in. I never really thought about it. I had friends in my building whose parents were from Africa and they had names that we could never have guessed how to spell, but they were just normal to me. I knew them for as long as I could remember. I had friends from all over. It didn’t really matter to me what color you were I was more interested in playing tag or swimming or riding my bike. If you wanted to as well you were my friend. We had kick ball games in the front yard with everyone in the neighborhood. We didn’t break up the teams in black vs white, or boys vs girls, everyone played with everyone.

When I reached my teen years I moved to a suburb outside of Boston that had what was called the METCO Program. This program gave kids from the inner city a chance to go to school in the suburbs for a better education. It turns out I had lots of friends in the programs. I didn’t know that for a good couple of months when I first started at the school. I had never heard of the program before and even when I did hear about it the thought never occurred to me that just because someone was black they MUST be from that program. A friend of mine had a car and we used to go into Boston and visit the friends we had met from our schools. We weren’t their white friends, and they weren’t our black friends.. we were all just friends.

Through out my life I have been friends and/or dated people of many different races, religions, sexuality.. and what have you. I didn’t think of them as my Asian friends, or my gay friends, or my Jewish friends.. they were just friends. I treated all of my friends the same. I have treated all people that I meet the same. I was raised to not judge people by the color of their skin but by the content of their character and apparently… that makes me a racist.

I’m told now that it is not good to treat everyone the same. It is not good to not pay attention to race or sex or any other immutable trait. That I am to ONLY pay attention to such things and that I am to give special attention to those that are different than myself. Now I’m not talking about getting to know about other cultures. That I’ve always done. I’ve asked my friends who I knew spoke another language to teach me some phrases (not just the dirty ones) or write my name. My dad encouraged me to attend different religious events and festivals for different cultures so that I may learn about things that I may be interested in myself.

I remember once as a teenager I volunteered for a City Year service day. I ended up being assigned to a local inner city Boston school that was being cleaned up, and I was asked to watch the kids that were there while their parents did their work. I was so happy I always loved taking care of kids. This school was in the middle of a section of Boston called Mattapan. It’s pretty much all black people. I was playing with the kids.. I still remember some of their names, and I still use it as an example of one of my proudest moments… not because they were black, but because I used my time there to teach one little boy in first grade who didn’t know how to read how to do a word search. He was so proud of himself that when his friend came over to give him the answers he told him that he didn’t need them and that he had learned to do it by himself. I hope that he took that with him. That he learned that everything that he wants to do it within his power and that he can do it all himself.

I remember at lunch all the tween girls were braiding each other’s hair and one of them came over and asked if she could touch mine. I have VERY straight.. Very blonde.. Very silky hair. She had never seen anything like it before. Her friends all chimed in saying that she couldn’t ask that. They said how rude she was. I smiled and told her “of course you can.. you’ll never learn about anything new if you can’t experience it.”. The rest of the girls were so excited and they all wanted to take turns brushing and braiding my hair. I didn’t think it weird that they were interested in learning something new. I found it weird that they had never known a white girl who’s hair they could touch. I’d known plenty of people of color in my life in a small town and we all played with each other’s hair.

In fact this wouldn’t be my last conversation about hair with a black girl. About a decade later I was sitting at work and someone had come in with a perm. A friend of mine, thinking out loud said, “how do you get the curl to stay? how come it doesn’t just wash out?” Again.. confusing to me how you can live in this country.. watch all the same TV commercials and not know about general products. I explained to her that we use chemicals similarly to how she used relaxers for her hair to straighten it. Her mouth dropped open. “HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT RELAXERS?!?!”, as if it were some top secret information “for black eyes only”. I had no idea how I know about it. I just did. It was part of American culture, therefore part oh MY culture. I didn’t think of it as a black thing or a white thing.. it was just a thing.

I have had many conversations like this over the years. I love to read and learn and grow as a person and part of growing is learning about things that don’t revolve around yourself. Things that are important to other people. People just like you who may experience different things. That’s how I was raised. I was raised to not think about race, religion, sexuality, or anything else that may make us different because in the end we’re not. In the end we’re all the same. And, that, I’m told.. is what makes me racist… at least according to my white friends.

Addiction, bullying, Love, parenting, Politics, school shootings

The world is on fire… and what do I tell my son?

Katrina Russell

The world is on fire, or at least that’s how it feels right now I was born in the mid-seventies. The Vietnam War ended a few months prior. By the time I was in grade school Reagan was president, the cold war was coming to an end and my reference to the whole thing was Rocky IV. I had some understanding of the Berlin Wall that was based on an episode of “Benson” and an episode of “Head of the Class”. By my 14th birthday the wall had fallen. All I knew about the Middle East are have vague memories of planes being hijacked by Iran. if I recall correctly, but for the most part things were fine.

My aunt would tell me about the bomb drills they used to do in 50s, as if hiding under their desks was going to protect them from an atomic bomb. I saw movies, TV shows, and eventually learned about Jim Crow laws, separate water fountains, and bussing. We lived in Massachusetts so it was a part of our past good or bad.Growing up I couldn’t imagine that people of color were ever treated that way, never mind in my father’s lifetime. It was all so bizarre. I was friends with everyone. I had classes with everyone. I had cousins of mixed races. I watched the Cosby show on TV (who knew where that would go). Everyone wanted to be Michael Jackson. I don’t remember a lot of race trouble at all.

Being from the mid-late 70s I was also raised on the record/movie “Free to be You and Me” by Marlo Thomas. speaking of Michael Jackson. He had a clip in the movie himself. pre Thriller. This was all about not judging anyone by their sex and letting people just be whatever they wanted to be. Again I knew that women used to not be able to vote. I knew that the 70s had bra burnings and feminism and all these crazy thing, but when I was a kid no one cared if you were a boy or a girl, you better be studying your math homework. When asked what we wanted to be when we grow up no one ever said that we couldn’t. I came from a time of empowerment for everyone. Well gays still had a way to go, but by the time I graduated from high school in the early 90s no one cared about that anymore either. at least not in Boston.

Then right before the turn of the century. Right before “The Year 2000”, when everything was supposed to be wonderful and futuristic, Columbine happened. I remember sitting in my car and hearing about it on the radio. I remember buying a newspaper. yes, they did exist. and reading about the horrifying events and how they unfolded. This was the beginning of the end of my innocence. Two and a half years later September 11th happened and our country was no longer safe.

This is when race started to become a factor again. I don’t mean just the occasional asshole in the after school special, but real racism. People of a certain look were starting to be hated. They were starting to be attacked just walking down the street. It wasn’t even a certain religion at that point. Anyone who looked like they could be from that middle region at all were the enemy. I remember “Harold and Kumar” made a movie about it. Kumar, who is Indian, is automatically assumed to be an Arab and a terrorist. It was done in a comedic way, but it was still a powerful statement.

From there things have just continued to get worse and worse. I’m pretty sure a big reason for this is the internet. Suddenly everything that happened everywhere was on everyone’s screen. Instead of it being a local story about one bad thing happening to one person it was look at how this happens all the time to everyone. Instead of kids being bullied on the bus, they were now having bullies push their way into their homes through electronics. Instead of the local news only talking about big stories that really mattered, suddenly news was 24 hours a day and needed to be more and more sensational to get the attention of the millions of viewers.When a child shot up a school their picture and name were posted everywhere. This created a perfect avenue for those mentally unstable individuals to claim their 15 mins of fame. When a man raped a woman, it wasn’t just that the man was a dirtbag. it was that ALL men are dirtbags. One story would link to other stories with similar scenarios. Now instead of a half a dozen losers in the whole country, it was, “look at all these guys everywhere. All men are rapists. Instead of a couple of racists assholes who caused problems. and to be honest I don’t care which race, religion, or creed it is there is an example of all of them. And because they all link together it’s suddenly happening everwhere

.I first noticed this when I became a mom and everyone was bashing other moms for feeding their kids grapes, leaving them in the car seat to nap, running into the gas station to pay for the pump while leaving a sleeping kid in a comfortable car. suddenly there were stories being forwarded to all the moms with horrible outcomes. Moms were no longer allowed to pee, or shower, or sleep. If they did they mine as well just give their children to kidnappers who want to either sell them to the sex slave industry or murder them. They mine as well suffocate them themselves, because children die all the time by being left in their pack n play while the mom pees by herself. Here are 10 links to similar stories to prove I’m right and you should have DCF called on you.

We had a black president elected into office twice. A lot of the people who voted for him were white. They did not vote for him despite he was black. They didn’t vote for him because he was black. They voted for him because he was a person whose policies they agreed with. After he was elected the country was suddenly racist. I’m not really sure how it happened. except that the people on the right didn’t like him. So therefore they were racist. Anytime he was criticized it wasn’t because they were being stupid or petty. It wasn’t because they didn’t like his policy. It was because they were racist.

The right tried to impeach Clinton. They dragged him and his sex life through the mud. They attacked his daughter, they trotted out victim after victim of his sexual advances. They made fun of him. They made his life Hell. not because they were racist. He was white. But because they were assholes. Once Obama was in office no one was allowed to just be an asshole anymore. They HAD to be racist. It was the only explanation.

We now have to have laws to make people serve some potential clients no matter their religion, while letting other vendors refuse based on their principals. We have religions we’re never supposed to talk bad about, while other’s we’re supposed to blame. We have races that are always the victims and another that is always the villain. And don’t even get me started on the battle of the sexes. and if they even exist.

I grew up in a time when we were taught to not think about what makes us different, and I’m raising my son in a time when he is being taught that because he’s a while, Christian male he’s basically the devil responsible for the oppression of millions even though he still can’t cut his own PB&J sandwich. I thought it crazy my dad had to hide under his desk and my son is being taught ALICE (active shooter) training.

My son is only in 1st grade and he missed half a year of school because of a global pandemic, and now the world is literally on fire. What is he going to learn from all of this? What do I tell him when he asks why he’s so bad because of the body he was born into, because he was so privileged to be raised by a single mom after he lost his father to the opioid epidemic? What do I tell my little boy when the world tells him how wrong he is? I tell him the only thing that I can. The same thing that I told him when his father died. It’s not his fault. Everyone makes their own choices in their own life and I’m going to teach him to make the right ones. To not judge. To not blame. To love everyone equally.