"Oh, you gay boys," she said,
using that to explain certain aspects of our home,
as if all gay men would do the same.
I bristled, though I wasn't sure why at the time.
I now understand why it bothered me:
I was no longer an individual;
I was lumped in with a group--gay men--
my uniqueness, my full self, dismissed.
This has happened throughout my life as a gay man:
people have assumed much about me
because they had their beliefs about gay people--
oftentimes strange beliefs, very wrong beliefs--
so what they assumed about me was wrong
(and wrong about gays in general).
I have found myself doing the same
with people of other races:
"That's what Blacks do.
"That's how Asians are.
"That's what you can expect from Hispanics."
It is racist to believe
that there are things behaviorally wrong (or right)
with a particular racial group.
In is anti-racist to believe
there are individuals within all racial groups
who behave negatively (or positively).
In short:
Individuals do not represent whole races.
Repeat this with me:
Individuals do not represent whole races.
So let's stop
(and I'm preaching to myself here)
extrapolating from the behavior of one or a few
to entire races.
It's simply wrong.
I know that people look at the looters
who are destroying businesses in some of our cites
and immediately decide
that all protesters are looters,
which they are not,
and that therefore
they can dismiss the entire Black Lives Matter movement
because of the negative behavior of a very few.
Wrong.
I no more represent all Whites
than a Black person represents all Blacks
(and so on for all other races).
The stereotypes (and accompanying prejudices)
that we learned and still carry
don't hold.
Let's let them go.
So when you catch yourself making judgments about race
based on the behavior of individuals,
stop the inner dialog and correct yourself:
"No, that doesn't hold. I'm letting go of that belief."
And if that judgment has already come out of your mouth,
apologize,
correct yourself,
and pledge to be less racist going forward.
Text and image © 2020 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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