Interracial Bullying- Some Summing Up

Tags

anxiety, bullying, race relations, social settings, US history

It seems that many people, like me, have found this subject the same mine field that I have. Maybe I’m brave or just plain nuts or naive but I somehow hoped these posts on interracial bullying would generate some sort of discussion but it wasn’t to be. Like slavery was for the US Congress in the first 50 years or so the US Constitution was in force, people don’t like to talk about issues dealing with race and like to keep the whole thing locked in some closet somewhere. The whole subject causes great anxiety, especially among white people. I think the main fear is saying the wrong thing and upsetting someone, which is understandable.

Again, maybe it was naive of me but I expected someone to offer some opinion on my last post to explain why it happened to me. Since no explanation came forward I will have to attempt to figure it out for myself and I think I have. I have come to the conclusion that the bullying I suffered at the hands of African Americans was most likely not racially motivated. It was simply just plain bullying and I shouldn’t have seen race in the picture. That also explains why I was the target of said bullying and not the mountain boy in the Klu Klux Klan. I am sure the reason why they never picked on that guy was because he never presented himself as a target. In fact, he was quite the bully himself. He was a large guy and because of that, he thought he could get through life by simply kicking everybody’s ass and even though that attitude sometimes landed him on the wrong end of military discipline, he didn’t change his attitude. I may have been wrong to see this sort of bullying as racially motivated when I have no proof it was. However, this doesn’t justify the bullying. Nothing justifies bullying and bullying in any form is just plain wrong.

Going off on a side road here, I would like to speak about my allegory of the sandbox. As a supply (substitute) teacher, I have worked at nurseries and pre school play groups on many occasions and I have witnessed the same phenomena each time. Children under three of different races and ethnic groups all playing nicely together. There was no animosity of any kind. The only incident I witnessed was two girls nearly coming to full fisticuffs over a spoon. It has been said that children that young don’t see colour and if that’s true, then it’s a good thing. To me, it proves my belief that racism is learned.

Next post: Race- The Numbers Game

To buy He Was Weird, go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/He-Was-Weird-Michael-Lefevre/dp/1909740942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403683688&sr=8-1&keywords=he+was+weird

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Interracial Bullying- My Own Experiences

Tags

Asperger's Syndrome, bullying, civil rights, fights, friendship, race relations, social settings

Back into the minefield I go but I need to go there if I ever want to make sense of things here. The next step in helping me to do so is to talk about my own experiences of interracial bullying, so here I go. I grew up in very much totally white neighbourhoods. There were a few African Americans at some of the schools I attended but you could count them with your fingers. Out of the 1,500 students at my high school, seven of them were black and only one in my year. In the four years we were in high school, I am quite sure we were only ever in one class together, Sophmore PE. We hung in different circles, well actually he did, I just drifted through high school as almost a ghost. I stayed in my shell and nobody really bothered me, I liked it that way.

This is not to say that I didn’t encounter people who were racist, I certainly did. My best friend in high school’s father was a total racist using the N-word at will. Then there was the time when I was on the soccer team going to an away game. The bus was driving through a predominantly black town when some boy on the bus shouted, “Put up the windows before the spear chuckers get us. (I now realise how historically wrong that term is because Europeans fought with spears until the 17th Century.) While, to my shame now, I thought that was funny, I don’t think I was racist back then. Besides, in my history classes, I found myself disgusted over the topic of slavery and was very glad that the North won the Civil War. Furthermore, when I went to and worked at the bible camp during the summer, I made friends who were black, clinging tightly onto one minister’s words: “They may be of a different colour but they’re still your brothers in the Lord.” Is it any wonder that I was convinced that we all could play nice in the sandbox together.

Note: This was the only photo I could find on google images of children of different races playing in a sandbox.

My experiences of interracial bullying began when I entered the service. It was there where I first encountered African Americans who were as hostile as the media portrays them as and many white Americans assume they are. Like I had experienced earlier in life, my Asperger’s like qualities made me the ideal victim to people who say me as an easy target. That includes blacks who saw me as some “weird, spaced out white boy.” As a result, there were some who gave me a lot of grief. However, I didn’t see it as I explained it above. While these African Americans were hassling me, I was looking at the guy they didn’t but should have been focusing their angst on. He was a mountain boy and every bit the stereotype of the redneck. That wasn’t all, he also openly admitted, even boasted to being a member of the Klu Klux Klan. My thought was “Why are you picking on me when he is the one in the KKK?” This led me to conclude that African Americans had their priorities all wrong, they went after the wrong white people and this resulted into me becoming more prejudiced myself.

During this time, I encountered many African Americans who were racists themselves, which only served to fuel my oncoming racism. While none of the racism I saw was directed at me specifically, the occurrences I did see were enough to pour oil on the flames.  The one that sticks best in my mind was the time when two African American guys were arguing and the argument became rather heated. The one guy reassured the other by saying, “I’m not going to hit you, you’re a brother. If you were some stupid ass white boy that would be different.” From that moment on, the incident left me sure that blacks were just as racist towards whites as the other way around.

When I got out of the service, I had the naive thought that it was different where I lived. More naively, I thought when I grew my hair long that blacks wouldn’t give me any grief because a teacher in high school once said that back in the 60s, blacks left the hippies alone because they were treated worse by society at the time. What I forgot was the 60s were long over and many of those hippies had cut their hair and conformed in the 70s and by the 80s, some of them were just as racist as the ones they had been protesting about on civil rights marches two decades earlier. But I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as the blacks were again picking on me and forsaking the ones who they should be focusing on. They still had their priorities skewed. In spite of what I have written, it wasn’t all bad. I did make African American friends when I was in the service and coming out. The problem was that like many people, I spent too long focusing on the negative instead of the positive. While, I knew for years that a person could be cool or a complete jerk despite skin colour, it took me a long time to realise it, maybe too long and I’m getting too old to let it consume me. After all, why can’t we all play nice in the sandbox together?

Next post: Part 3, Some Summing Up

To buy He Was Weird, go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/He-Was-Weird-Michael-Lefevre/dp/1909740942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402953887&sr=8-1&keywords=he+was+weird

Interracial Bullying

Tags

bullying, He Was Weird, labels, race relations, teasing

This subject was always going to be a minefield for me and I often thought of abandoning the idea of touching on this subject. After all, in “He Was Weird,” this is one aspect of bullying that Mark doesn’t experience. In fact, his only experience of other races is very positive. It occurs during the one chapter where everything goes right for him and in that chapter he meets three African American boys his own age and becomes friends with them and since the main objective of this blog is to try to sell more copies of “He Was Weird,” I could very easily leave it out. However, there are experiences in my own life that I have spent years trying to make sense of that compels me to talk about it. But you have to wait for the next post to read about those.

One of the reasons why I fear to post about the topic of interracial bullying is down to the combination of where I came from and where I live now. Back in the very beginning of the century, okay the year 2000, when working as a supply teacher, it seemed that at many of the schools I worked at, there was a British teacher who was convinced that the vast majority of white Americans were racist. Unfortunately, I have to concede that many are but not the vast majority, although there are many white Americans who don’t think they are but their words and actions dictate otherwise. On the flip side, there are Americans and quite a few British people who think that most people in the UK see race issues through rose coloured glasses. This is could very well be true of those on the left of the political spectrum but for the most part, the view is inaccurate. I, myself, if I took the words of one British lad to heart, I could apply the stereotype about Americans to British people. I met this lad back in the 80s and he stated that the apartheid regime of South Africa and the pre- civil war American South was justified because all blacks rely on welfare.

Like many things racism has evolved, especially in the US. Only the most ignorant white supremacists say that other races should work as slaves or ride the back of the bus. These days, many white racists see themselves as the victim. They identify any real or perceived act of non-white racism towards whites and use that to say that the other guy started it, especially if the specific incident wasn’t dealt with properly. The belief here is that had the situation been reverse, and the non-white person was the victim, every race relations group would be in there making sure justice was done.

Now before I go any further, I know that racism isn’t just a black and white issue. I have read about the animosity and bloodshed between other non-white races, especially in inner city areas. In Britain, there are tensions between Indians and Pakistanis, Hindus and Sikhs and there are many more examples. All of it has to be addressed as racism and needs to be addressed every bit as the traditional black and white racism.

Sugar Ray Leonard v Roberto Duran

Racism is also a very big tool in bullying. When five people of one race gang up on one person of another, it is both bullying and racism. However, it is more subtle as well. One example was back in June 1980, when I was in a redneck town in the US. That night, young white men were dancing in the streets celebrating Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran’s victory over Sugar Ray Leonard. The reason was that the black guy lost, although more derogatory words were used against Leonard. One of these redneck boys justified it by stating that blacks brag about how they rule boxing so it was good to see one of them lose. Didn’t really justify it to me but I can see what he meant on a small scale. My point here is that there seems to be this ongoing battle between all races to see who’s the better. Any small victory seen by one race is immediately lorded over the other to say, “See, we’re better.” That to me, is where the main problem of interracial bullying lies. Why can’t we see each other as people? I’m not saying that we should ignore our heritage or roots, it’s part of who we are but there doesn’t need to be this competition and point scoring. Furthermore, when someone of another race makes a mistake, there is a tendency to go straight for the jugular with the race of that person insulted as well. There is no need for this or the need to take offense at the slightest perceived injustice and blow it all out of proportion. All bullying needs to be stomped out, especially bullying between the races.

More of this will be looked at in a future post but before I do, it is best that I examine and talk about my own experiences in this area. Sorry if I left you hanging here but I don’t like to go into too long of a post.

To buy He Was Weird, go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/He-Was-Weird-Michael-Lefevre/dp/1909740942/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402395003&sr=1-1&keywords=he+was+weird

 

They Really Are Out to Get Me

Tags

Asperger's Syndrome, Autism, bullying, conspiracies, D.A.M.P., labels, obsessions, school shootings, teasing

Once again, I know this isn’t going to be the post advertised in the last one. I feel that one can wait one more week as there is something else that this ageing person (I’m 53 on Saturday) needs to talk about. The other day, I was attempting to back out of the parking space at the supermarket when at least five or six cars seemed to suddenly come out of nowhere and drive past preventing me from backing out. My response was all of those who drove past were saying, “Mike’s trying to back out so let’s all drive behind him so he can’t.” Now, as my wife so quick to point out, those cars weren’t deliberately trying to prevent me from backing out of the parking space but to me it seemed that they were.

Throughout my life, it has often seemed that there was some kind of conspiracy against me. People or society as a whole has either changed the rules or acted in a way that seems to thwart me at every turn. Let me tell about the most obvious one (at least to me.) When I was serving in the Marines from 1979 to 1983, it seemed that while men’s hair styles were shorter than the early 70s, men with long hair weren’t seen as weird. I, because I was serving my country, was sporting a very short hairstyle because haircut regulations in the USMC even then were very strict. So, when I got out in 83, I was looking forward to the prospect of growing my hair again. What happened was that the vast majority of men cut their hair very short just when I was able to grow mine. Naively, I thought that once people learned that I had been in the service and was just letting my hair down, literally, they would understand. Wrong!

It was the same with partying. Because of the strict disciplinary regime military personnel have to live under, when they do get the chance to let off steam, they do so in a big way.  There was and probably still is a party till you drop mentality in the armed forces. I took this attitude with me when I left the Marines and thought I would find like minded people when I attended the local community college. It should have dawned on me that this wasn’t the case when no one took notice of my suggestion to hit the local bar after a class was cancelled one day. That would have prevented me from making one major faux pas. At the end of the college year, the Spring Bash was held and I attended the bash armed with some pretty powerful drinks. When others politely declined my offers to share, I thought, “more for me.” The result was me ending up passed out on the park bench puking my guts out. Put it this way, I would have been more popular that day if I had turned up with a nine millimetre glock and just started blowing people away. My conclusion from these two scenarios was that when I left the service in 1983 and was ready to grow my hair and party down, everyone else cut their hair and conformed just to spite me.

So, there is a genuine conspiracy against me, at least according to my Asperger’s mind. Like I said in an earlier post, all computerised and mechanical objects are programmed not to work properly for me. The conspiracy is even more true when I am driving in the car having to get to a certain place at a certain time. The ensuing traffic jam is because all of the vehicles on the road are now there to slow traffic down and make sure I am late. Then there is the case when at work or wherever that information doesn’t get passed to me. Surely, they’re doing it to make my life miserable. The examples go on.

So you see, the world is really out to get me and there is a genuine conspiracy against me. Okay, maybe not, but with the workings of my mind, it’s very very easy for me to feel there is.

Next post: Interracial Bullying

To buy He Was Weird, go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/He-Was-Weird-Michael-Lefevre/dp/1909740942/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401798362&sr=1-1&keywords=he+was+weird