Lucy’s Blog

Mistaken For Racism

I was interested by the ideas that the second blogger on this same page about how other kinds of prejudice can be mistaken for racism. It seems that whenever someone who belongs to a racial minority is targeted by another person they’d like to think that they’re dissing on their ethnicity. It’s easier to assume that people are generalizing about your background than that they disapprove about a specific element of your personality. Of course its inappropriate to treat people diffrently based on their sexual orientation, physical appearance etc but a lot of these prejudices are usually just assumed to be racist.

As an example, my dad’s friend owns an autobody and about a year ago he was looking to employee a mechanic. He had a bunch of guys come in for interviews and skill evalutations and one of the applicants was an African American man who, the owner claimed, was extraorinarily nice, but didn’t have the right amount of skill. When the owner didn’t call him back for the position, he took it as the owner being racist against him and contacted the NAACP to try and get back at the employer. Much to his surprise, when he returned to the autobody with his legal entourage, it gave my dad’s friend pleasure to introduce him to the skilled, African Ameican mechanic that he had hired to work in his shop. After hearing this, I just thought it goes to show how some people will jump to the most ridiculous conclusions in the event that things just aren’t going their way.