Americans have succeeded in bringing about a "dialogue" on racism after the Trayvon Martin case. Everyone seems to be talking about racism, from Barack Obama to Oprah.
In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, Obama told us that he was, at one time, treated with suspicion because of the colour of his skin. Until he became a Senator, he explained, women were afraid to be alone on the elevator with him. And, of course, Oprah was recently denied a chance to view a very expensive handbag while shopping in Switzerland. These, they claim, are incidents of racism that they've had to endure.
I have a few thoughts on the matter. First one being that I do believe "isms" exist. There are isms all around us and racism is unequivocally a very real and serious one. But at least it is frowned upon and generally outlawed. However, there are few sanctions against people who are classist, for example. And I think it can be argued that the situations described by Barack Obama and Oprah fall into that category. I've been uneasy being alone on an elevator with a man of any colour. If the man is dressed a certain way, the uneasiness can be intensified. Obama himself said he suffered that kind of discrimination until he became a Senator. We all know Senators wear spiffy suits. So, once he was dressed with dignity and class, his skin colour no longer posed any problems on elevators. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if skin colour had been a factor at all?
In terms of the Oprah incident, my mother loves to go into the most expensive shops on Bloor Street in Toronto. It's our annual "day in Yorkville". The truth is, my mother does have enough money to buy whatever she wants. Not from a lifetime of wealth and comfort but from years of careful planning, saving, budgeting, investing, and self-deprivation. Not to mention years of hard, intelligent, work as a secretary.
But my mother bears the appearance of someone with just enough money to buy a box of Kraft Dinner. She is about 5'2" and shrinking. And she's as plump as any grandma should be. Her hair is silver and fluffy. Her shoes are Birkenstocks. Her clothes are off the rack, from the mall, with horizontal stripes stretched across the girth of her mama-belly. And she is very kind, blue-eyed and beautiful.
Last summer on our day of sunshine and flowers and fancy shops in Yorkville, I recall pretty much all of the shop keepers raising an eyebrow of scepticism when my mother would ask to see an expensive Hermes bag or Gucci wallet. She was actually shopping - not just messing around - though the likelihood of buying a $5,000 wallet with her wise attitude toward money is very small. And we did have a similar experience to Oprah's. The clerk told my mom that she wouldn't be able to afford the ostrich wallets that came in 5 colours. But, the Asian clerk explained, the "ladies from China" could walk in and buy all the colours at once. "These wallets, over here, in regular leather, would be better for you", she said.
So it seems we didn't look Chinese enough to afford the wallets. Though we are clean and well-groomed people, perhaps to her we look more like Honey Boo Boo's family than descendants of the Ming Dynasty.
I took note of the designs and found a very similar wallet for under $100 at Town Shoes a few months later. Obnoxious mustard-yellow leather with card pockets in bold green, blue, red and orange. About five colours all in one design. So my mom got her fancy-looking wallet in every colour, and she got to keep all her money inside it as well!
And we were not crushed by the experience of being called out for the non-billionaires that we are. I thought it was snobby, and foolish, of the clerk to speak to us that way because you just never know who you are dealing with. But again, I bore no injury from the experience and nor did my mom. In fact, I hadn't recalled that incident until Oprah brought up her own, and said it was racism.
I actually believe that all of us in the human race are victims of some kind of "Ism" from one day to the next. I think it's part of the human condition. Very few people are immune to some sort of prejudice based on age, class, sex, weight, height, etc. Some of it is mild. Some of it laced with hatred. In high school my brother was called Pizza-Face because of his acne; I can tell you it hurt both of us as much as the N-word hurt anyone in contemporary North America. Most of us simply tolerate these ignorant slights and get on with our lives. If we focused on these insults too often, or for too long, we wouldn't want to get out of bed in the morning.
As a woman, I see misogyny all around me. In children's movies, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the team coach will say to the boy's team "Okay ladies, you can do better than this". An angry commenter on a news article will attack another commenter with: "Are you having your period? Take a Midol". As an ultimate insult, men call one another "douche bags" (a device of feminine hygiene) and label each other "pussies" or "vaginas". It's also common to say "he screamed like a little girl". And singers like Justin Bieber are ridiculed because their "only fans are 12-year-old girls". All of which implies that anything female or feminine can and will be used as a pejorative. It seems that girls and women are considered the lowest of the low by half the population.
More importantly, there are also very serious examples of sexual discrimination - like the fact that even in Toronto, a woman can't go out to pick up milk at the corner store after dark without hoping she won't be raped. And female children have to be cautious in a Walmart that some predator won't try to carry them out as a sex slave. Or that boys at a party won't have sex with your daughter and post pornographic photos and humiliating remarks about her on social media.
So yes, there are many serious examples of women having to face dangers more severe than everyday ridicule and put-downs. But I wanted to highlight the mild, day-to-day sexist remarks and attitudes because they are so widely accepted we don't even notice them anymore. Parents aren't gasping when the coach in the movie says "Johnny, you run like a girl". Nobody is bringing up these instances in interviews, saying how crushed they were that their gender is held in such a low regard. Not because these everyday insults to girls and women are subtle, but because they are part of the fabric of our lives. There's no "dialogue" happening about it, and none is in the works, either.
Even having said all that, I still haven't made the point I want to make. And that point is this. Racism is a problem for black people and anyone who cares about them, which we all should. Absolutely, it is a problem. Black people are stopped while they are driving nice cars. Questioned by police more often. Black teenagers are asked to produce ID more often.
When I was younger I was reunited with an old friend from Ottawa. We had known each other as children, but ended up working together at a publishing company in Toronto. She is black - not Halle Berry black, but Oprah black - and tall, slim, elegant and pretty. She was a book editor, and always dressed like one. We were having lunch together, and talking about jogging, and she brought up the fact that there wasn't always a convenient way to carry ID when going out for a run. All the other young women at the lunch table asked "why would you need to carry ID when you are jogging?" And the black friend answered, "well, because I get stopped by the police. I once went running without ID and the police told me it was against the law not to carry ID. So my brothers and I, we all do. And when we get stopped we can show who we are".
When we get stopped?
This story always stuck with me because this girl and I had grown up in Canada, both of us starting out in grade 1 in Ottawa and ending up in a publishing company in Toronto. We were living parallel lives. And yet the colour of our skin really had made an important difference to how we were treated. Neither I, nor any of the white or middle-eastern girls at the table had ever been stopped by the police. None had ever bothered to carry ID when jogging or going to the park or going to buy a popsicle from the ice cream truck. The whole notion seemed crazy. Yet that was about 20 years ago and since I do follow the news I can see that the situation has gotten worse. Not better. I don't think it's gotten any easier to be black. Not at all.
Not because someone looks at you and decides you can't afford a purse. But because someone looks at you and messes with your freedom. Your daughter's freedom. Your son's freedom. And this is where I believe the narrative should stay focused. I admit, I admire Oprah and Barack Obama very much, because they are incredibly accomplished people who do very good things on this earth.
But I think that when Oprah allowed the purse incident to hog the microphone away from the issues that actually matter ... I think she does a disservice to the cause. Classism and clerk snobbism are nuisances, to be sure. But the undisputed racism that still goes on unchecked - the kind that ruins lives, not the kind that momentarily dampens a sunny day in Yorkville (or Switzerland) - that is the racism that should always be in the spotlight. This other stuff - like Obama thinking he can read the racist minds of white women on elevators - is just noise that distracts from what really matters.
After the progress made - and discussions opened up - after the Trayvon Martin case, today people will be talking about the purse Oprah wasn't readily-invited to buy. Many, like me, will be able to say they've had the same thing happen to them. And yet tonight a black family driving home from the movies will have their BMW pulled over and they'll be detained for no good reason. And a group of black teens walking to the community centre will be stopped, interrogated, and intimidated. And if one of them fails to show his ID or expresses his indignation at being singled out for his skin colour there could be serious trouble.
That's the stuff the dialogue should be about. So let's keep our focus, people. What happened to Oprah is an interesting story many of us can relate to - but let's not be distracted by it. I really thought we were heading in the right direction on race relations in the United States and Canada ... but somehow we ended up in Switzerland.
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