In high school, I elected to take a 1 semester class in African history. Among other things, this class talked a little bit about slavery. And although many other bits of information from that semester have crept sneakily from my brain to disappear in sidewalk cracks, this moment sticks with me.
During a class discussion about the African slave trade, our teacher paused the discussion ever-so briefly to say, "I'm embarrassed to be saying this in front of Maria," and then she continued with the rest of the depressing information (depressing because of its horrible reality). Back story: the Maria she referred to was not me (my name happens to be Maria) but instead the only black girl in our history class. It was a very strange moment; I got the feeling that my teacher really did feel bad for talking about slavery in front of a girl whose ancestors may have been slaves themselves, but in calling attention to this fact the teacher really succeeded in nothing more than making the situation very, very awkward.
This teacher was a woman who obviously prided herself on the fact that she is extremely tolerant, especially toward people of darker skin color. It was not uncommon for her to begin a story with, "My African-American friend, Mark, said the other day..." or "My African-American friend, Sharon, thinks that..." This baffled myself and my peers. Why should a woman teaching tolerance insist on constantly calling attention to black people in the classroom and in her own life? Shouldn't she be telling stories about her "friends," dropping the "African-American" title altogether?
America seems to have reached an interesting point in its existence regarding treatment of once-discriminated people, particularly African-Americans. We don't know what to call them anymore. Black? African-American? Or... just Americans? Is it more insulting to acknowledge the difference in skin color, or to pretend that it does not exist? And, especially in the case of my history teacher, in trying to come across as tolerant and politically correct, are we really just discriminating?
I really enjoyed this blog.
Discrimination comes in all shapes and sizes. There's a line to draw between helping people who have always been dealt a low hand, and singling them out for "help" that isn't really help. The best way is sometimes to offer help without drawing attention to the assistance.
In the case of people who are constantly declaring their tolerance, in my opinion they aren't really tolerant at all. In order to be truly free of discrimination, we've got to be able to identify people as PEOPLE; attribute their personalities, their personal backgrounds and experiences, whatever... but to constantly mention a person's ethnicity, race, or gender as their primary identifier is to me offensive, insensitive, and completely ridiculous.