"After a while, I had to wonder........have we really made any progress with race relations?"
You will always have outliers. To look at the other side, when was the last time you saw black people step off in the street and wait until they passed when a white person approached them on the sidewalk? Or refused service?
But you see, I have never seen the kind of things you describe above.....including lynchings.
What I have experienced is what the people on the show said.....its when whites get together that the racial epitaphs come out.
As far as your two examples, I'll bet money the woman from Arkansas grew up in a small, exclusively white, rural town. And it wasn't necessarily racist, when you don't deal with other races, then there is little reason to examine you attitudes and beliefs with respect to the issue.
You may well be right but that's not the way she presented it. She did not make the distinction that she lived in a small, white town with no blacks.
Use of the word 'nigger' isn't necessarily racist, just possibly insensitive.
I think there are a lot of blacks who would disagree with you. The word carries a lot of power.......at least for them.
As far as the other one, I think she is probably being more than a little hysterical. For a locksmith to risk their bond and their livelihood just to engage in a little rape, stretches credulity. That is just irrational.
She also said that she believes white people do better work than black people. She said that isn't so much from experience but the way blacks are presented in the media. I thought for sure the other blacks on the show were getting ready to lynch her.
There was also a black actor on the show. In 2001, he was taking his then 3 year old daughter from to Philadelphia. The plane had waited on the runway for a 1/2 hour before taking off and his daughter had to go to the bathroom. He promised once they got airborne that he would take her to the bathroom. However, once they leveled off, the "seatbelt sign" did not click off. If you've ever dated a flight attendant, you know that sometimes the pilot doesn't click off the "seatbelt sign" so that flight attendants have time to prepare the meal and beverage service without having to deal with passengers....esp. in the aisles.
In any case, that's what was happening on this plane and there was no flight attendant around so the guy got up with his daughter and started to go to the bathroom. Suddenly, a flight attendant appeared out of no where and told him to sit down. He explained that his daughter had to go to the bathroom. She said that his daughter would have to wait. She told him to sit down again. When he complied, she then demanded that he fasten his seat belt.......which got him out of his seat again in anger. In the meantime, his daughter wet herself. Then suddenly the pilot came out. The problem was explained to him and the pilot apologized for not turning off the seatbelt sign. He went back and turned it off immediately. And then the guy took his daughter to clean her up.
When he got off the plane, there were 5 marshalls waiting for him. He was taken off to jail after he gave his daughter to a relative. A few days later the flight attendant dropped the charges. He believes the flight attendant would have reacted differently had he been white. BTW this incident occurred before 9/11.
The thing that most surprised me was not the incident nor the 5 marshalls on the ground but the fact that the actor feels the need to wear a suit when he flies. I never dress up to fly.......in fact, during the warmer months I wear shorts. The very concept that you have to dress in a particular way to show respectability is foreign to me if not annoying. Its that single thing that makes me wonder how far we have come when it comes to race relations and our perceptions re. race. |
