Give your own personal Experiences of Racism..

I think its time we all shared some personal experiences with racism. If we can get these out an into the open then maybe we can all learn something about ourselves. It doesn't have to be something that happened to you: Could have happened to a friend, or someone you know while you were there, etc.

Here's one of mine.

I will tell you a story about deep rooted racism that I personally ran into. I don't know if you have noticed this but I'm a white male. I used to work as a vendor who traveled all over the Southwest of the US from West Texas all the way to Florida, and from South Texas (Laredo) at the way to Kansas. We have crews from 2-15 depending upon the job. We went to this job in a actual Home Depot in (not saying the city) deep North East Texas, right on the boarder with Arkansas. Checked into the hotel and went over to the Home Depot. Did kind of notice that there were only white people everywhere we went. I was the crew chief, we went to the Store Manager and let him know we were here for the job. He looked over my crew. Then looked at me and asked if I had to use the two "N-words". I was so totally stunned, I didn't know what to say for a second. Sure I know there are people who don't like certain people. They may even sneer, or be rude to them. But I had never heard someone just open up right in front of everyone and say that. Thats when the smart- took over and I said he was my boss, and I sure hoped a stupid redneck like him wouldn't mind if he and I fixed their store. Well needless to say, in the next twenty minutes we were all in my car driving really fast down the highway as purty much the whole town, sheriff, guys in sheets in the back of pickups were chasing us in to the next county. We finally pulled over to a state trooper a couple of counties away. He had reports that we had all tried to rob a homedepot in (certain city). After spending a day in jail, we were released because some honest guy had told the state troopers the whole story. It turns out that the city and county in question was run by old "Reformed" Klan members. We were advised to never go near that place again, or we were probably dead. My boss actually ordered us to go back and make good, finish the job or it was my butt. The job would have payed my company about $25k for 4 hrs work. I told them no, and I havent been working for them ever since.

Share your own personal experiences

Sharing experiences is the best way to pass on knowledge.

I dated a Pakistani lass some years ago who I met whilst at art college. We were really happy together, except for one annoying problem-racism.

Whenever we went out on the town, we would get 'covert' racist comments and disparaging looks from whites, that, we could deal with, but what was even worse was the 'overt' racism from asians. The worst offenders were young asian lads who do such things as deliberately walk into me as they passed by as my girlfriend and I walked down the street hand-in-hand, I was called 'Gora' (white trash) and many other offensive Urdu names too many times to remember, and even spat on. The whole situation got so much so that we split shortly after the spitting incident.

I feel this thread, Racism & Understanding, is discussing this subject currently. Many of the posts that we see are personal accounts from different members on how Racism has impacted them and their outlook on life.

Please direct any future posts to the thread linked above.

See this link as well.

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Thread Closed

[edit on 10-4-2007 by chissler]