- Several years ago while waiting in line for a prescription at the pharmacy, I overheard a middle-aged white man refer to someone as “that colored girl.” He was speaking about Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
- When I was teaching a unit on immigration and the American “melting pot” vs. the American “salad bowl” theories of assimilation vs. racial and ethnic identification (either chosen or imposed by others), I happened to mention that by 2050 there would no longer be a “white” majority in the United States. One of my white students responded, “You’ve been watching too much TV!”
- Biracial people are still referred to as “mulattos” where I live, even by their own family members who are white.
- Where I live, the derogatory term for poor whites is “woodchuck.” Like many other derogatory terms, this one has been reclaimed by a by an author’s successful “Woodchuck’s Guide to Gardening” series.
It’s almost as if the entire 1950′s through 1990′s never happened for some folks here. When they left high school, colored people were called colored people (thank you to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for reclaiming that phrase in his wonderful book), and “Negro,” “Afro-American,” “African-American,” “Black” (as in Black Pride and Black Power, and the ongoing capitalization of Black by some writers who prefer to use that term), and now “person of color” never made it this far north, where sightings of non-white-skinned people are rare, far away from the urban centers of America. And it is true that for some of the oldest generation in this state, there were no paved roads and no radios. I know one man who learned of Pearl Harbor the next day when he walked to school from his family’s farm.
These people aren’t necessarily racist, just ignorant and isolated. To me, they represent a project to be tackled, one person at a time…
