The Implicity of Racism

[ailamos]

A couple of hours ago, I was in a nearby cafe. I stood by the cashier as I waited for my coffee and next to me sat a young couple. The guy mentioned some play about the revival of modern African dance. The girl asked what was modern African dance. The guy then gestured in a manner that primates move and uttered what he thought were African sounds. The girl, who was the one facing me, noticed that I was looking at them and gave the guy the typical "shut up" look. After I got my coffee, I came over to them as asked the young man, "do you really think that's how modern African dance is performed?". He then replied with a "I don't know, it was just a joke" and told me to "chill". I then told him that people tell jokes about sensitive matters because they do not want to be perceived of having certain viewpoints and that his childish attitude does not help black/white relations. I then walked out.

 

This leads me to share with my fellow nomads a piece I had during and after a backpacking trip I made last year from Lisbon, Portugal; across Spain; ferry to Italy; Genoa-Napoli-Venezia and everything in between; Slovenia; Austria; and finally ended up in Germany.

 

Here we go:

 

The Implicity of Racism

 

You enter the metro and as soon as you do you notice the guy standing next to you slowly reach to his over-the-shoulder bag and closes the zipper; a couple of stations later a second man enters and stands not far from the guy next to you... the paranoid man reaches down to his bag and makes sure he closed the zipper... what would you think? a routine precaution perhaps in a crowded metro? Sadly, to a white person it might, but not to someone of a darker skin color. The 'you' in this story happens to be me and the second 'suspicious man' was a dark skinned Bangladeshi man. The guy taking the 'routine precaution' was a Ukrainian tourist... Ukrainian is an educated guess since he had a Ukrainian flag sewn to his bag and was wearing an AC Milan "Shevchenko" jersey.

 

Since I started this backpacking journey around southern Europe I've been noticing repetitive pattern of “implicit racism” from different people in Portugal, Spain and now in Italy. The first instance happened in Portugal and I've been carefully observing incidences ever since; one night, a woman walking her dog was passing by the front entrance of the building I lived in, as I approached the entrance that the woman took off her necklace and put it in her pocket. I just stood there and simply shook my head as I went inside the building. It was a smart move because if I had been a thief, she would’ve given me the incentive to steal something I hadn’t known was there. In any case, it's not like I hadn't noticed implicit racism when I lived in the US, I did, but I didn't feel it as much as I do in Europe since I've always lived in mixed areas in the NY metro area.

 

Unfortunately though, most of the implicit racist I encountered on this journey had been American tourists: In a recent episode when I was in Granada, Spain, I happened to be standing at a traffic signal behind an American twosome, the female member of whom was boasting about how “multicultural” and “diverse” Brooklyn has become and how she would love to move there as she likes that kind of “stuff”. I didn’t make much of the conversation and I made my way to a small Kebab restaurant where a nice Moroccan man I befriended earlier in the day worked, as I sat to eat my shawarma, I heard the familiar voice of that girl from the traffic light (familiar because it was one of those annoying high-pitched nasal voices), apparently they decided on eating in this particular place as they were reading the menu outside. When they came inside, the girl looks at me, turns to her friend then starts with “you know what?” and decides on eating later because she apparently could hold out a bit longer. I suppose she didn’t want to be sitting opposite a black guy in a tiny, cramped restaurant.

 

Certain Americans I had met over the years love to show-off how multicultural they are and how many “people of color” they have as friends, it has become a sort of status symbol to make statements such as "my friend Takiysha” or “my friend Miguel” but when it comes to actually acting on their so-called ‘open-mindedness’ they fail miserably as their insecurity towards the black (or brown) color becomes apparent and no amount of show can hide that. On one angle, the Bradley Effect has proven the contradiction, hypocrisy and outright lies of some so-called ‘open-minded’ folk who have a habit of telling opinion polls in the US they will vote for the non-white person running for office but when the time comes switch sides in the booth, apparently they don’t want to be seen as racists yet they are racists of the lowest degree... those that cloak their racism with a deceitful cover of so-called ‘open-mindedness’, but that’s a different, yet related, matter to what I’m writing about here.

 

On with the Americans: during the leg of the journey in Italy, I joined an information tour group in Rome to get a better insight of what I was looking at in the Colosseum and the archaeological remains on the Palatine Hill. There were, rather expectedly, a majority of Americans in my group including three US servicemen from Ohio, South Dakota and California that were stationed in the UK and were in Rome on holiday, I knew all that because one of them was talking to a lady who had asked him where he was from, but his response was for all to hear. After a quick introductory session about the tour, we headed to pick up our headsets and we gradually formed a small crowd around the window where they were being distributed. As I got in, I was behind the burliest of the servicemen, a tall young man with a muscular physique. He took a quick glance at me and almost immediately reached to his back pocket to make sure his wallet was still there. It was a sad sight because even though he saw me earlier as part of the group he couldn’t resist succumbing to his insecurity despite the fact of my unfailingly touristic look (the guidebook and camera) and not to mention payment into the monument and the tour itself. The servicemen in general turned out to be full of cocky, half-witted comments throughout the tour ("young and estupido" is an understatement) that got annoying to an extent which reaffirmed my notion (or rather bias) that it isn’t exactly the intellectuals that join the (US) military as I could count with my ten fingers the number of US military men and women who, by my standards, are reasonably intelligent people.

 

I used the word “unfortunately” in the third paragraph because albeit I’ve met some amazing and truly “open-minded” Americans during my time in Europe, a good majority has been the ignorant ones. All these incidents lead me to ask the question: what kind of tourists/people does America export? Which parts of the country do they come from?

 

Now on to the Europeans, who are no less implicitly racist than the Americans. I was riding a bus on the way to the hostel in Granada when I noticed a black woman about to enter, so I focused on the faces of the people on board; rest assured as soon as she boarded, two Spanish women abruptly moved away from her (rather hurriedly) and started talking, presumably about her, unfortunately I was too far to clearly decipher what they were saying. They did, however, wear mocking smiles and were looking at her (she was facing away from them). Spain has been suffering from a wave of African immigrants, most of whom are illegal and trade in commodities such as purses, sunglasses and artifacts on sidewalks. This is something new to Spain and, unlike Portugal, had only one black African colony. There are, however, large numbers of Latin American immigrants, and unfortunately I don’t know much about the social status of Latin Americans in Spain to comment. In any case, from my experience, these immigrants have been the most humble and helpful people I’ve met. A couple of them even walking me to a grocery store that I was looking for. Perhaps this is part due to our shared darkness of skin color, it might just be their nature to be as helpful as possible, or it might be because they yearn for acceptance into society. It will be a matter of time before they get become bitter at the rejection of society, just think African immigrants in France and Turkish immigrants in Germany.

 

Manu Chao's Clandestino describes the thoughts of an immigrant rejected by society:

 

Solo voy con mi pena / Alone I go with my sorrow

Sola va mi condena / Alone goes my sentence

Correr es mi destino / To run is my destiny

Para burlar la ley / To escape the law

Perdido en el corazon / Lost in the heart

De la grande Babylon / Of the great Babylon

Me dicen el clandestino / They call me clandestine

Por no llevar papel / For not having any papers

 

Pa' una ciudad del norte / To a city of the north

Yo me fui a trabajar / I went to work

Mi vida la dej / I left my life

Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar / Between Ceuta and Gibraltar

Soy una raya en el mar / I’m a line in the sea

Fantasma en la ciudad / A ghost in the city

Mi vida va prohibida / My life is forbidden

Dice la autoridad / So says the authority

 

On this trip, typically and without fail, people glance at my face, then at my camera, in constant chronological succession ... wha? He’s black, and he looks like a tourist... how is that possible? He probably stole that camera from somewhere. Where is his fake Luis Vuitton merchandise? Generally, I’ve noticed three distinct looks people give me while on this journey: the look of surprise/intrigue which in itself is a rather innocent one if one isn’t used to people of a darker shade than themselves; then there is the look of conceit, the sort morally low people exercise, who failingly attempt to place themselves in a position of prestige; finally, there’s the one of fear/discomfort when a person has an ingrained or rather tattooed imprint in their minds that a black man posses danger to them, or, much like the apprehensive US servicemen, display obvious insecurity that results from their ignorance.

 

I took note of the first look, the one of surprise/intrigue while traveling around the Portuguese countryside. People just look, sometimes almost to the point of staring, and from that look I could tell that they’ve never seen a black person much less interacted with one.

 

I was looking for a famous landmark in Rome and had stopped an Italian woman to ask for directions. Her response? She flat out refused and looked rather terrified. Why? I had my hoodie on. I have noticed that a black man in a hoodie petrifies (non-black) people. In order to experiment and to also check that I was not exaggerating, I asked a friend who had joined me in the Italy leg of the trip to notice the expression of people passing us as I have the hoodie on . Rest assured he concurred with my notion. The woman who had refused to assist me was relieved to notice that I was indeed looking for directions and not trying to rob her as I kept repeating “Dove Piazza Venezia?” several times.

 

Media generally portrays black people with hoodies as the “gangsta” type looking for a kill and not to be messed with. That has gradually filtered down to society and even amongst the black people themselves.

 

This whole societal construct of White=Normal, Black=Bad/Evil angers me greatly. I think people are unware of their conformity to this construct and act upon it without any thought; they don't stop and think "why am I afraid? is this a justified fear? or just a reaction that has been programmed on me by society?"

 

A couple of Americans came up to me as I was taking pictures of a monument in Rome and asked me if I could take a picture of them, in return I asked them, “I’m a black person, are you sure I won’t run away with your camera?” The male member replied with a self-confident smile, “why would you, you’ve got a better one”, then I replied, “If I didn’t have a camera and looked like a tourist, would you still ask me?” this time there was a pause, then the expected "No". That pause made me decline to take their photo and moved on. Perhaps it was a gross over-reaction on my part, but to me it was justified because I had had enough.

 

At that moment I remembered a piece from the song “The Spark” by The Roots:

 

My attitude a product of society,

So sometimes for gratitude, you know you can't rely on me,

Niggaz eyein me, with looks of they anxiety,

Wonderin what's in my heart, velocity or piety.

 

These are but a few of many instances and I came to the realization that implicit racism isn’t my problem at all; it’s the problem of the people who have a problem with darker skin, whether they know it or not, they can move their purses to the anterior and feel their back pockets as much as they desire, it will simply show me what’s inside of them.

 

I would like to finish by saying “hold on to your purses, and check your pockets white people, there’s a black man behind you” but I won’t because I don’t believe that to be a fair statement to the Spanish/Italian family that welcomed me to their home in my first destination in Spain, Seville. I was a total stranger yet I completely felt like a member of the family, even playing with their children. Thinking back... it is an interesting paradox.

 

I suppose there is a balance somewhere.

[SayidSomal]

why do atheist like to argue?

[ailamos]

What? :confused:

[Ibtisam]

loool Racism is so hard to hide, I guess in places like Spain and Belgium, they do not see enough black people to human-fy black people. So they are just stuck with TV and media representation of black people.

 

Your experience reminded me of this

 

Sayid; seriously you need help with your paranoia. In any case I know you work with a huge none-Muslim population and some of them you love, eat, laugh and crack jokes with. Why then do you get your pants in a twist and cannot give someone who have a different faith to you or no faith the same respect. :confused: I’m sure you don’t think that Tom, Dick and Harry are better somehow because they happen to be white and none-Muslim. Get a grip man, it says something about your own confused double standard and inability to follow their Islamic rules of interactions.

 

In any case you don’t know what if anything the poster believes in, and for all you know he/she could be a better Muslim than you.

[ailamos]

hahaha... that was a great link Ibti... thanks!

[SayidSomal]

yal iyo yaaka bir! @ the confused atheist :cool:

 

friends and i were at train station having conversation about the fact that everything in life has been already sang about - when one of us uttered "that the world was coming to end".

 

overhearing us was an atheist - who came over - saying "it is interesting that you mention that" followed by an half hour argueing about God and the world's end.

 

Just as you observed the implicit of racism - i noticed the inherent nature of atheists to wantonly argue for the sake of it.

 

 

Ibti - when you are shouting at me - don't i deserve the kid gloves and the niceties that you are encouraging me to handle with atheist??

and for your information - i don't work with atheist. - however i don't mind working with hindus

[Ibtisam]

^^You should have said so; we are not mind readers.

 

Here is him on a blind date:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZUHCLtnYFQ&NR=1

lol

[N.O.R.F]

Mainly experienced racism in Italy. The French are a little more reserved. The Brits are more reserved than the French. The Scandanavians are more reserved than the Brits.

 

Not intending on going to Eastern Europe.

[Ibtisam]

My fav one is the office party

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNbUKIkRieM&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=136C35B8803CC87B

[SayidSomal]

The Scandanavians are more reserved than the Brits.

obviously - you have not beign to Findland -negerasa!

[ailamos]

@Sayid: Are you labeling me an atheist because I question things and challenge the status quo? In any case, it's amusing that you talk about how atheists like to argue in a thread that has nothing to do with religion.

 

@Ibti, you're cracking me up sister!

[SayidSomal]

i am being anti-atheist on thread that is about racism.

[ailamos]

^^ ayayaya... funny enough you're the one looking for arguments now...

 

It's just typical of hardcore religionists of accusing others who don't agree with them of heresy/atheism. So, I won't go down that well because it seems that every thread started in this forum somehow leads its way towards religion.

[Ibtisam]

Sayid Keligi Muslim ha nooqan. Religion is a private affair between inviduals and Allah. Maxaad ka rabta people?

 

I'm looking to visit Spain, Itlay and France this year inshallah, but I don't like open racism. I'd rather they hide it well like the English.

[ailamos]

@Ibti, the blind date one was hilarious... totally, got me off guard!