What is racism? Where does it come from? How do we indirectly perpetuate it?
Racism is the act of not just distinguishing that someone has a different color but judging them because of their shade, making accusations based only on their skin's tint. I see racism frequently, I see it brushed under the carpet like crumbs before company arrives. Starting in my own life, a number of my good friends are members of the Carolina Country Club, as well as some of my family. Only about a month ago did I learn that Black-Americans are not admitted under any circumstance. I ruminate over the countless afternoons I spent there, the food cooked by the staff I've consumed, the time this summer I jumped in during break and how embarrassing that was. All that time, I was oblivious to the fact that I was supporting a racist association. Every towel I threw into the bin by the door as I exited, someone with a darker shade of skin and black hair would not have permission to touch.Yesterday, I was going to the club to grab dinner and workout with a couple friends. Instead, I had my brother pick me up and take me home. I would not knowingly perpetuate racism anymore.
Racism exists everywhere, in industry, restaurants, churches, schools. Little blonde-hair, blue-eyed, ivory skinned girls are to wear pink and green smock dresses and socks with ribbon lacing the top. At least my sister and I and our friends did. Dark skinned girls wear Baby Phat and Reeboks, or so I recall from my four years of public elementary school. In Better Homes and Gardens, the magazine my mother treasures so much, I have never once seen anyone darker than my skin color. It seems as if people with darker skin do not even exist in that magazine and our Vineyard Vines catalogs, as if anyone not Caucasian cannot be models, as if they are not even existent at all. Restaurants, churches and schools are all one category: association by economic and racial status. Yes, some people are lower-class and hangout with the kids who are at the opposite end of the spectrum, some people with opposite skin colors do go back after church to eat Sunday supper together, but it is rare. In my years at St. David's, I saw that beyond anything. The kids may play on the jungle gym together at recess, but the black girl's mother and white girl's mother would not be found dead sharing a meal together.
Throughout my project, I felt like I was participating in another redundant project about a nation that will soon fall under the title of forgotten projects. I may still feel that way, but I also seized a decent piece of information to be used as an argument. While researching, I came across the fact that the shade of one's skin in Brazil determines economic and social status, entirely. All the business executives are lighter skinned, all the prominent people's skin is lighter than the rest, as if that makes them superior. Even their actors' skin is about the same hue as my own, lighter than the majority. I found that out while I was petsitting. Taking a rest from my book, I turned on the television and came across Disney Channel's "Pass the Plate" (only my favorite of their weird, educational commerials.) Bananas were the food of choice in this clip, and after a few countries talking about bananas in their cuisine, a guy and a girl from Disney Channel Brazil flashed onto the screen and began to speak about their favorite way to eat bananas. In the twelve seconds the pair were on the screen, I examined their skin, flawless and glowing, definitely airbrushed but also a light-grayish hue, lighter than most Brazilians I've ever seen. Couldn't Disney even go against the confines of the social norms and follow their own advice in accepting everyone? I suppose no.
Not only is racism evident in my life, it occurs in non-fiction literature and history dating further than we know. In the most recent book I read about racism, The Help, based on truth in the 1960s, racism continued like it were the law. Women did not work but treated line-upholding as their jobs. They paid their black maids little money and in turn expected them to raise their children, in every way but sculpting their minds and sharing their opinions. Spoiler Alert: the haughtiest of all the white women arranges a "bathroom initiative" where all white families who have maids should place a separate toilet on the home's premises, just for the black maid to not give their children "diseases." In this novel, particularly, racism is suggested greatly and not at all indirectly. Now that racism is not the popular choice, people decide to slyly exhibit their hate towards people of different shades. They refuse to admit someone into their establishment, to be lumped with a different race by wearing resembling clothes, to speak the same or act the same, to hangout with people who's grandparents hated theirs. And within these simple actions, we create an indestructible infraction, a schism neglected and never to be repaired.
