TODAY AT WORK A VERY DISTINGUISHED WOMAN DESIGNER who caters only to the top echelon of Cincinnati’s best families, was complaining to me because on the way to our showroom she and her husband was who was speeding (she said 60mph in a 35mph zone) was waved over by a DIRECT QUOTE ‘Nigger bitch-dyke motorcycle cop." She went to say ‘__(her husband) said ‘Fuck that nigger cop" and they drove on past and quickly turned down a side road and apparently lost the policewoman.
I am not making this up. These people think that because I work where I work that I MUST agree that people of color should know their place and be a ‘credit to their race’ I told her my son in law was African American and i wasn’t comfortable with her calling a policewoman such a derogatory name.
Her reply was that obviously my son in law was one of the ‘good ones’ but she didn’t apologize….
This happened today at around 2:30 in the afternoon May 9, 2008

And here’s Bill Doran keeping the pot stirred:

Oddly…I turned down a full ride to OU that I received through their American History contest and turned it down because of what I saw at Miami during my visit (all the superficial beauty the school is so renowned for). The racism was still alive and well, although I didn’t really appreciate it until 9/11. I hesitate to place undue blame on SW Ohio for it at Miami, as a great many of our students were obnoxious rich white kids from Chicago, Columbus, and Cleveland in addition to Cincinnati.

Also, I really liked Aladdin and Waking Life.

quite frankly, it just hurts too much. so im going to steer the conversation toward Toy Story, both 1 and 2. and a few foreign flicks, one from france called “The Triplets of Belleville” and a japanese one called “Grave of the Fireflies”. and to make it an even top 5 for me, i’ll say “Feival goes West”.

(I’m not the only one, was I?)

Everyone seems to have a different definition of “racism”. I wish I had seen this discussion last night. I’ve learned a lot about racism in the past several years, but my experiences leave me more questions than answers. Posts like this are interesting and can help answer some questions.

I grew up in Southwest Ohio. My high school had a few blacks but I was not friends with any of them. Generally, my family is conservative Republican. My grandmother sometimes says "darkies." All of this made my experience in ten years away from Ohio a learning experience, because I had never been around diversity like that, and I think the same can be said for many of us who grew up in this part of the world. Here are some things I have learned over the last decade. They may seem "racist" at first glance.

1. I learned that just because you are in a black neighborhood doesn’t mean it’s a bad neighborhood.

2. I learned that saying hi to someone on the street can do wonders to disarm any racial tension that may exist between two strangers.

3. I learned racism wasn’t confined to white trash but could be found in all social spheres. Indeed, the more money a white person makes, the more likely he is to hold racist views, or at least distance himself from people of another color. I think, though, that the opposite is true for blacks. The more money a black person makes, the more likely he is to hang out with whites. Now, though, I’m just generalizing. That’s bad. I learned that, too.

Yes, it was ignorance. On the one hand, I knew all of this, yet it took living elsewhere to understand it. Does this mean I was racist? I don’t think so, because I was not motivated by hatred. I had always viewed things such as KKK rallies, police brutality, and discrimination as evils and in college I remember defending affirmative action though I did not understand why we needed affirmative action in the 1990s. I had always assumed we as a nation were past that kind of thing, but then again, I had the America is infallible idea back then as a result of growing up in this area. The thing is, I didn’t even KNOW I thought those things. I didn’t realize that I felt uncomfortable in black neighborhoods. I didn’t realize that my eyes darted away as I passed someone of different color on the street. I had simply grown up in an environment where "that’s how things are."

But I also am blessed with an open mind and an insatiable desire to learn about people, why they do the things they do, how they interact with one another. I soon grew comfortable around people of different races, and I pretty much forgot all of those naive ideas I had back in my Ohio days. It took a friend of mine visiting from Austria commenting about the racial diversity on a DC bus last summer to remind me of how far I had come in the decade since I had left SW Ohio.

Now, however, being back in the place I grew up is showing me the ugly side of race again. The most disturbing experiences happened as I was helping out on the Obama campaign – mostly doing canvassing – and I couldn’t believe some of the things I heard in this part of the world. But I was also having a difficult time discerning what was racist and what was just ignorance.

Now, there are some things I know ARE racist:

1. Saying blacks have the same opportunities as whites followed by a sentence containing the word "lazy." Try developing into a productive member of society when you grow up with a crackhead mother, no father, go to a crumbling inner city school, surrounded by drugs and crime. It takes a special person – a very strong person – to climb out of that, and if most of us had grown up in that environment, we wouldn’t have what it takes to make that climb.

2. Using the term "race card" every time someone mentions race. This is a term invented by whites who refuse to acknowledge that the first statement isn’t true. Are there people who use race as an excuse for bad behavior? Yes. Congresswoman Crazy is one of them, and there are many, many more. But this Junior stuff, for example, well, there is an element of truth to it. Many of us here at RR are of the more enlightened persuasion, but there are some pretty nasty people in this area. We don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but we do know that Junior has received death threats, and well, I’m willing to bet that more than a few of those had something to do with race in them. Now, I don’t know about you all, but if I receive death threats, I am going to shape some opinions on things based on what’s in those.

3. Saying all white people are racist. Vice versa, too.

4. Saying your race is the only one that suffers from racism.

5. Saying "I’ll never elect a black president." This is different from saying "America will never elect a black president" or "America is not ready to elect a black president."

6. Using the N word. Doesn’t matter what color you are. Same goes for using gook, wop, and all of those other racial epithets for which you don’t have to say "using the X word."

7. Holding KKK rallies on the steps of the Hamilton County Courthouse. Or anywhere, for that matter. Duh.

But there are those other things I’ve seen and heard, things like everyone in a restaurant sitting at tables furthest from a black guy, or the guy who was complaining about affirmative action programs in Troy, Ohio (where whites are an overwhelming majority), to people lowering their voices in saying "black guy" to tell a story about someone when a racial description was not necessary to the story, or reactions from the Griffey thing, that may be defined by some as racist but that may not be motivated by hatred. Is ignorance racism? I’m not sure a person can answer that question if he’s been stuck in SW Ohio most of his life – I think you have to see different things, because that’s the only way you’ll really understand that not everybody thinks like you do.

Anyway, thanks for posting this. It was thought provoking and I’ll probably continue to think about it for awhile. My vote goes to Brendanukkah for the Tribe post.

Against the Angels. Yeah, those Angels. The 22-15 Angels with Vald, Garrett, Tori, and Casey.

If you don’t know who James Shields is, you better ask somebody.

But the title of this post clearly should have been “Friday Night Whites.”

Met fan here and New Yorker here. I was looking through here a bit to see what you guys thought of Krisvky axing(looks ridiculous from a distance) and what’s going on with you guys when I ran up on this thread. Anyway don’t beat your town up so hard, racism as an American problem from sea to shining sea. As a Met fan we just watched Lastings Milledge get run out of town by the press basically because they couldn’t take a young black guy mannerisms and after hours activity. I think this a national problem and baseball suffers most from a sports because many of the racists are older white folks, and thats the power structure of the sport. Full disclosure I’m a pretty young black baseball fan, and their still some of us left.

the most worthwhile topic I’ve seen discussed on this site. I know I don’t post all too much, but I read as much as possible, and sort of feel like I know the personalities here pretty well. I had finals this week or I would have jumped in the fray while the posts were coming hot and heavy. If it’s not too late, I’d like to add my two cents.
I’m twenty, I’m white, and I come from a working class background. I lived in Columbus till I was ten, and then moved down to Asheville, NC. Now I go to school at Davidson, which is just north of Charlotte. Splitting time between the North and South has given me a good perspective on life, I think, as has being lower income. Davidson, if you don’t know, is a super-elite college. it costs over forty thousand a year, and has probably the highest academic standards in the nation as the average GPA is a touch below 3.0. The Ivys long ago started to give inflated grades. Davidson is populated by a mixture of the insanely wealthy and the upper middle class. I’m on full financial aid here, and work two jobs and have substantial student loans as well. I’m not looking for sympathy, but I just wanted to point out I’m different. The student body is also overwhelmingly white. The college has made some progress in the last decade, but minorities are almost invisible on campus. The white kids here have adopted that odd approach toward blacks where they embrace black culture, but have no black friends. There’s always gangsta rap blaring from the speakers on our hall, but a few months ago a bunch of drunken white students embarrassed themselves by screaming slurs at a group of black students. This sparked a big rally on campus, but nothing really changed. When you grow up this rich and insulated, you get your opinions on African Americans from mass media, I guess.
All my closest friends at Davidson, oddly enough, are Muslims. I’m a Middle Eastern Studies Major, but I definitely didn’t plan on this. I’d never been around any Muslims before coming to Davidson, and getting to know some has definitely been a beneficial experience for me. Being black in America is a serious hindrance, but looking “brown” might be even worse. The amount of shit you have to put up with if you are a Muslim in this country is ridiculous. The looks you get, the full-body searches every time you get on an airplane and the total societal isolation you’ll experience are stunning. So is the ignorance concerning Muslims. 99.999% of the practitioners of the Muslim faith want peace and tranquility. In its Westernized version, Islam incorporates the good tenets of all faiths. I know it’s not going to change because of one day six and a half years ago, so I guess I need to just accept the fact that I’ll hear “fucking ragheads” every time I’m out in public.
I guess Islam sort of tangentially segways into the last thing I wanted to mention, namely the current Presidential race. And I am sorry for rambling and wasting so much space, so feel free to delete this post or ban me altogether. I just feel it’s therapeutic to think through these feelings and put them into words. I’ve been working for the Obama Campaign since January, when I went down to Aiken, South Carolina to canvass before the election. Since then, I’ve been to Georgia, Virginia, and Ohio while doing a lot of work here in NC as well (and ballooning my student loan bill). The thousands of doors knocked on really gave me new perspectives on race in America. In South Carolina and inner city Atlanta, a couple of things really stuck out. First, black people in the South really fear whites, almost cowering sometimes when they came to the door. One guy brought a shotgun to the door. Second, there was a pervasive sense of hopelessness about the Obama candidacy. Many thought that he’d be killed before the election, seriously. I suppose the overwhelming poverty among blacks in the South is much of the reason behind this. In South Carolina, there were no paved roads besides the main roads, and most of the houses were falling in. Also, the poor whites I spoke to usually favored Obama, or at least it was a 50-50 split. In Ohio, it was a different story. I went up for Spring Break, and was able to spend a while there campaigning. The whites in Columbus were pathetically racist. I was prepared for this, having lived in Columbus, but it was shocking. I was told that “I ain’t voting for that faggot Muslim,” which proves, I suppose, that those viral emails work. In one district right on the Franklin County-Pickaway County border, 125 of the houses I knocked on were Clinton supporters. There were none for Obama. I’m not really sure what that means, although it was striking. I knew the state was surely lost then, at the very least. However, just as depressing was the black woman in the Columbus projects who told me that she wasn’t voting for Obama if he had “goddamn slave owners” running around for him. Frankly, I’m not sure what could force someone to have that view on race and society. Going around the country has convinced me that we are a nation perhaps irreparably divided. You may not agree with Barack Obama, and I’m certainly not asking you to. I like what he represents personally, the goodwill that could be engendered across both this nation and this world with his Presidency. But is the nation really ready for that? I dunno. Maybe Senator Clinton was right in her insinuations. I’d like to think not. As an aside, I seriously wavered in my Reds fandom when I watched Ken Griffey lying on the ground in agony while being booed. Sure it was frustration over his injuries, but I’ll bet you all 100 times the debt I owe that Adam Dunn wouldn’t have been booed. That’s just the way Cincinnatians in particular and Americans as a whole are. They’re bitter I suppose. You’d have to be to jeer at Jr. while he lay on the ground. I’ve been writing this for a long while now, I’ve been all over the place and it’s after four, so I guess I’ll bring it to a close. Sorry if I pissed anybody off, these were just my naïve observations. I’ve made some gross generalizations of course. There are some legitimately aware kids at davidson, they just aren’t representative of the schoool as a whole. Also, the experiences with voters are just a few of the most memorable I had.
P.S. the highlight of all the campaign work is being stationed in Columbus all summer to work. I can’t wait to be able to see the Reds on a regular basis for the first time ever!