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Exposing the colour of prejudice

by Babel-Fish | October 25, 2009 at 03:59 pm

160 views | 32 Recommendations | 8 comments

It's some time very interesting what you can find while looking for a story to write about. The story of John Howard Griffin is certainly one we should all read. It concerns ones color of skin and the prejudice that may have been culled but still certainly exists.

What is interesting the fact they I now live in a country of brown people, being white I of course stand out like a sore thumb. As there is a minority here that are anti-American some of these racialist loonies have abused me with racialist remarks. You see when people here see a white white guy we are all classified as being an American with wads of dollars in our pockets.

But if you are black and not just brown, most Filipino's will not want to associate themselves with you much. You see the whiter you are indicates how rich you are. This of course is not any form of prejudice but shows how you can be valued by your skin by some cultures.

Most of the actors here in the Philippines are mixed race their father or mother being white.

However please read the story about John Griffin of which I am sure you will enjoy as much as I did, and gain some new enlightenment about color and racialism as I did as well.

How much does the colour of our skin make us who we are, and shape the way the world sees us?

The answer to that question may seem obvious now after decades of slow and uneven progress towards racial equality and enlightenment.

It would have seemed very different 50 years ago to the white Texan writer John Howard Griffin, when he embarked on one of the most remarkable one-man social and psychological experiments in history.

Griffin was the white man who fooled hundreds of Americans into believing he was a black man as he travelled through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia - and who felt at first hand the bigotry that meant.

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Roy C

at 16:54 on October 25th, 2009

That was a different era, but prejudice survives in subtle and not so subtle ways. My wife and I have tests worked out to determine if the jerk was a jerk because she is black or because the jerk is just a jerk.

If I get the bad treatment as well, then the jerk is just a jerk.

There is also class consciousness.

When my wife walked around an upper class community we used to live in, white liked her. I see it. But when I saw black young people who came to shop walk around, with pants down, and other paraphernalia possibly of gang members, I could see a negative reaction that I know some of the young black men would take as prejudice.

The race problem in the US is not as tricky as what the class problem thrown in with it makes the race problem into.

Babel-Fish

at 20:07 on October 25th, 2009

I think thats generally the way when a white guy is in a relationship with a girl with a really healthy tan. Her own race have more a problem with skin color than the white population. Its something I notice a lot and Ann does as well, its something we have to live with.

Barbara McPherson

at 17:18 on October 25th, 2009

Was that book Black Like Me? I read it years ago, very interesting. The poor man died of multiple cancers from the melanin altering drugs he took.

Pythiian1

at 19:19 on October 25th, 2009

Good post.

I think the economic divide is another form prejudice, e.g. the caste system in India is certainly alive and well.

Babel-Fish

at 20:09 on October 25th, 2009

Yes India has an added problem of caste a culture that's very difficult to change.

a211423

at 21:42 on October 25th, 2009

The book Black Like Me made into a movie in 1964.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057889/

His experiment is truly remarkable, and sadly ironic that the drugs he took caused him to lose his life. I am glad we can honor him with this remembrance.

Hugh Askew

at 02:57 on October 26th, 2009

Look the treatment of the shanty Irish when they came to the US, the Jews in Europe (and not just Germany), Chinese wherever they went, Mexicans here now, Arabs in France, the list is long, and goes back a long, long way.

Seems folks can find something, anything, to group people. Discrimination is pretty pervasive. Mexicans seek better treatment here, but refuse the same for their southern neighbors. Westerners are almost intolerable in Iran.

Funny, used to work with a second generation Mexican. Born and raised in the US. No accent, ex-Marine, married to a Mexican-American. He always referred to illegal Mexican immigrants as wetbacks. But never heard him call illegal immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala, that.