In “Redheads and Dobermans” I joked about some blatant stereotypes of people with different hair color, but I quite seriously often wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a skin color other than white – to have others look at me with suspicion, fear or hatred and make judgments without caring to know who I was as a human being.
If I’m being honest, I have to admit that there were times in my life when, growing up in an all-white community in the 60s, I was sometimes guilty of doing the same.
In his stand-up act, black comic Jimmie “JJ” Walker once told this joke about the war between the British and Northern Ireland
“Protestants and Catholics! What the fuck? It just goes to show that in a country without any blacks, Hispanics or Jews, people will improvise.”
Clearly, the election of our first black president has brought to the surface a very ugly racist element in our nation -- something I, in my privileged white-skinned (size 4) ass, had naively thought was buried in the past.
It makes me sad. And that’s all I’ve got today. I’m just sad.
Are we just genetically programmed to hate and fear those who are different from us?
