Racism sucks but sadly it is a part of life that at some time or another many have to deal with. I'm a white American so it would be natural to assume I never have to deal with it, but I live in an area that is around 65% to 68% black. A few years ago I went to Wendy's after work to pick up a couple burgers because I did not feel like cooking. I ordered two junior bacon cheeseburgers, along with other things. I waited and I waited and I waited and finally I leaned over the counter to see if I could see what the holdup was.
There was a young black woman standing in front of two partially made burgers. Another young black woman came over and asked what the first one was waiting for and she said bacon. The second one asked; "is this for that white man out there?" (They did not see me watching and listening to them) The first said it was and the second picked up what looked like a stainless steel a container and pulled a metal rack out of the bottom, reached in and pulled out a few pieces of bacon that were dripping in grease and might have been there all day for all I knew and said; "this is good enough for him" and put the bacon on my burgers. When they were given to me I said how I saw and heard it all and that I would not take them and wanted two fresh burgers with fresh bacon on them. There were about four or five other people waiting to place orders or pick up their food and they were all black. They started getting really nasty with me and one told one of the employees, the one who said; "that's good enough for him" to call the cops and they would say I was causing a disturbance. So I just left and ended up going home and cooking after all.
When I was part owner of a car dealership my partner ran an advertisement that said no credit application would be refused. Now that was sneaky in a way because it did not say that the lender would not turn down any application and only that we would take any application and attempt to get it approved. A young black female's credit application was turned down and she screamed at me and called me a racist because I did not approve her loan. She said if she were white her loan would have been approved but we turned her down because she was black.
I attempted to explain to her how we do not approve or deny loans but she would not only not listen, she would not stop talking and would not stop yelling and screaming that I was a racist. I also tried to explain what the advertisement actually meant, that we would not refuse to take/accept any credit application, the advertisement that if my partner had told me about I would have tried my best to talk him out of running, but I was still called a racist. Within about two weeks some Black organization wanted a meeting with my partner and I and basically they tried to strong arm us into creating a new management position, just for someone who would be black, to make up for the wrongly perceived injustice of what happened with the black female customer. We refused because we were a small operation and there was no need for anyone else, regardless of color, and we were not about to create a management position that was not needed and pay someone who was not needed. We were told that they would picket our business and run local advertising campaigns against us and spread the word among the black community to not do business with us because we were racists. My partner at the time, who is anything but a racists but who is also anything but politically correct, finally blew his top and said if you want more blacks working here then buy the f'ing place and you can put in as many as you want. No one picketed, no advertising campaign calling us racists occurred and if any word of mouth campaign was undertaken it didn't hurt our business, so it was basically a hollow strong arm shakedown attempt to try to scare us into giving some form of restitution for an incorrectly perceived racist incident.
When one of my nieces applied for college she was turned down by the college that was her first choice. From third grade on the lowest grade she ever received was an A-. During the summers while attending a private junior high school and private high school she was attending the very same college taking college level courses. Her college entrance scores were the highest of anyone that had ever come from her private school, and it's the best around.
Both of her parents were alumni of the college. She had a stack of recommendations from other alumni of the college, every teacher she ever had that was still alive and in the area or able to be contacted to be able to get one from wrote one for her as did her minister and several charitable organizations she did part time work for.
After repeated meetings, without being accepted, the admissions person she was dealing with told her and my sister and brother in law that what she was going to say next was off the record and if they ever told anyone she said it she would deny ever having said it.
She then said to my sister and brother in law; "your daughter is the wrong color." She said they have to meet government set quotas, which in reality is nothing more than legally legislated discrimination. She said she had a stack of applications, all from minority applicants, and that my niece's qualifications surpassed every single one of them, but the remaining openings had to go to minority applicants. Again, it was a case of legally legislated discrimination.
My niece more than earned her right to attend that college but she was denied simply because she is white. After earning a degree at the college that was her second choice she then got into the one that had first turned her down and she earned a second degree.
So yes, racism sucks but no one should ever believe that only those that are members of groups or races that are officially considered to me 'minorities' are the only victims of racism. Proportionally minorities are victims of racism more often, but it is not by any mean an experience exclusive to them and to them alone.
In every single group there will be some percentage of people who hate people of some other type or group simply because of what they are. All you really can do is pity the ones who have not evolved to a point to where they can only see people rather than instead only seeing color or religion or sexuality etc. and judging someone strictly according to those sort of things.
If it hasn't happened already, at least in some nations, sooner or later the racists will find themselves being a minority and if treated differently because of it I have to wonder how much they will like it and how well they will deal with it and if they will possess the needed level of intelligence to realize how they then feel is how their kind made many others feel for so very long.
