Dear Race-Relations Activists,
Mission accomplished!
I had a conversation with a black couple last weekend.
It happened at a hotel breakfast buffet.
I was waiting for Chris (aka ‘Freight’) to get back with his plate.
He was taking FOREVER.
Hunter-gatherer tribes travel miles to collect berries and they do it in less time than it takes Freight to make a waffle at the Hampton Inn.
While I waited, I posted a picture of the sign that was on the door of the microwave oven.
The sign read:
“CAUTION: Do not microwave hardboiled eggs or paper cups.”
Before Freight got back, a family of three sat down across the table from me.
Immediately, I noticed they were black.
Then I noticed that the little boy had a bowl of Fruit Loops.
Where did he find Fruit Loops?
I didn’t see any Fruit Loops when I was getting my cereal!
As I got up to exchange my box of Special-K for Fruit Loops, Freight finally came back with his food.
I asked if he saw the sign on the microwave.
It really bothered me that such a sign was necessary.
Who microwaves a hardboiled egg?
The lady sitting across from me explained that some people like warm hardboiled eggs.
So why can’t we put them in the microwave?
“They’ll explode,” she said.
I was shocked…
…and overcome with an almost irresistible desire to put a hardboiled egg in the microwave.
“You need to poke a hole in the shell so it won’t blow-up,” she continued.
What about the paper cups?
“I have no idea about that,” she confessed.
At this point, her husband returned with a perfectly cooked waffle.
Truly it was perfection.
I voiced my appreciation for his culinary skills.
I told him that I don’t use waffle irons in public because my cooking method fills the room with blue smoke.
Then I asked if he had any ideas about the dangers of microwaving paper cups.
He said it might have something to do with how the cup is made.
I asked, “Like maybe if it’s made from hardboiled eggs?”
Everybody else at the table thought that was pretty funny.
…So I didn’t tell them I was being serious.
Our dialogue continued on various subjects from kitchen appliances to mother-in-laws.
Thirty years ago I wouldn’t have thought about their skin color.
It didn’t make any difference to me.
Now, thanks to the inescapable racial narrative being hammered into my head, I realize I didn’t share a conversation with a pleasant family.
I shared a conversation with a pleasant, BLACK family.
My awareness is heightened.
My FIRST thought was, ‘These people are black’.
Culture is responsible for my changed perspective.
I wasn’t raised this way.
I’m ashamed to write this stuff.
Is this what ‘healing’ looks like?
Because I wish this story was just about waffles, eggs and paper cups.
Those things are what’s most important.
18 Responses
This is very insightful and funny! Oh so true!!
Very true. Back in MLK’s time it was about ignoring the color of people’s skin and treating everyone as an individual. Nowadays ‘colorblindness’ is apparently racist. MLK must be rolling in his grave thanks to BLM and the likes.
tildeb….you would be a perfect match for Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory”….you’re robotic….and you’re a racist (as defined by today’s society)…see what I did there?
I hate getting slammed by people for telling them my first concern is not the color of their skin but their behavior. I get told I am racist for “pretending” I don’t see their skin color.
I don’t.
All I see is “jackass” and that is what turns my stomach.
The rule of thumb is that if you use specifics to talk about racism, you’re not talking about racism.
We will have arrived when we don’t see the colour of a person’s skin (or gender, or ethnicity, or sexual preference, or age, or religious belief) as having any meaning. We have a ways to go.
Gender, age, sexuality and religious belief have a much more significant impact on a person than skin color.
It’s when we attribute meaning on to someone else on these bases that is the bias in action.
A certain amount of ‘bias’ is necessary. You see a 100 year old male wearing a dress and riding an elephant, you’re not going to assign some kind of meaning to that scene?
It would be biased if I attribute certain ‘proper’ behaviours to 100 year olds, attribute ‘proper’ behaviours to being male, attribute certain assumptions about motivation on these elements, and so on. These are the imported biases that create a foundation for systemic discrimination and bigotry. We have to teach ourselves to think differently and wean our assumptions away from our attributions.
How would I think differently about a hundred year old dude wearing a dress riding an elephant?
And are you guilty of systemic discrimination and bigotry toward religious folks?
Of course I’m guilty. It’s a handy shortcut all of us practice and for different reasons. But I’m getting better at recognizing when I fall into this trap and so I can rectify the bias immediately and remind myself to allow the quality of the character I experience to justify my attitude towards an individual. This attitude of mine is also open to change because most of us come with a rather wide variety of character depending on situation and affective thinking patterns. Sometimes, for example, we simply have a really bad day and so judgement I think is best served by using a spectrum rather than an event. But that’s something that develops over time rather than an opinion assigned when first encountered.
In today’s worldview, gender is neutral, sexuality means everything, religious beliefs mean nothing (The problem lies when the definition includes a deity or superhuman power. For example, atheism is called a religion but the belief denies any power other than man. Other “religious definitions” are so broad as to include cosmology and ecology which most people regard as scientific studies and non-religious in nature.). Age is treated as merely a physical phenomena and being aged no longer deserves respect.
C DeRaps, you write, “For example, atheism is called a religion but the belief denies any power other than man.”
This is incoherent if one respects what’s true. If one doesn’t respect what’s true, then all bets are off.
Atheism means non belief in gods or a god. That ‘non’ part is really important because the term is a negation and not a positive claim. You would have us think that non belief is a different kind of belief. That’s not what atheism is. It’s not a different kind of belief in gods or a god (that’s the ‘theism’ part); it’s no belief.
If you substitute some other term than ‘theism’ – say, ‘fish’ – you’ll immediately see the problem: how can a non fish be another kind of fish, for example? That’s an abuse of language and that’s what you’re doing to pretend belief-in-atheism replaces a religious belief-in-god with a similar kind faith-based religious belief, exchanging a submissive faith-based belief in some god with a similar submissive faith-based belief in man. That’s not the case. Atheists exercise evidence-adduced beliefs and that’s different kettle of fish altogether (so to speak). That presentation you make may serve your purpose to criticize the straw man you’ve erected – the faith-based beliefs in Man by atheists – but it does not serve what’s true – the lack of faith-based belief in its religious sense by atheists.
tildeb….you shouldn’t lump sexual preference or religious beliefs in there…preference/beliefs infers choice, which they are. The others are not And for the record, Christianity is not a religion. It’s never defined that way in the Bible. Christians do not define Christianity as a religion but as an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. It is the only ‘religion’ that you do not have to work to be saved, it is by the freely given grace of God.
I included those because overt symbols of religious affiliation or sexual preference may entice me to assign to that person all kinds of group characteristics that may not, in fact, be true for the individual. In other words, when we are tempted to do this, we are usually exercising bias. Mild bias may not be harmful and may even be of net benefit but we need to at least be aware of this enticement and not unthinkingly act on it.
As for your claim that these are by choice (that’s open to debate in some cases) and therefore all right to use as the basis for discrimination, what I am hearing is a rationalization. If you choose to identify as something or other and I attribute to that group identity characteristics that may or may not be the case for you, then I fail to see how this legitimizes the discrimination I am exercising.
I had the same experience recently in a different “food” setting. I felt pressure to speak a certain way to show that I wasn’t racist. It was awful. If interfered with my ability to just enjoy our encounter. How much better life would be if everyone, including the Church, taught that we are all God’s creation made in His image, just in different shades of brown skin determined by the amount of melanin we possess. We don’t need “race relations”, we need TRUTH! ALL lives matter, from conception to last breath. ALL have sinned and fallen short of His glory. ALL are precious in His sight. ALL are welcome at His table, regardless of waffle making prowess.
Spot on McQ!