Encounters with racism?

My first encounter with racism was something that I refer to as "the oven incident".

It was in....first or second grade I think. I was about...7 or 8 years old at the time.

This kid was going around telling everybody in class that his grandfather had told him that all black people were white people who had done terrible things and were put in ovens. If he or any of his friends did something bad then they'd all be put in ovens and turned into black people too. Being A) In Alabama B) a predominately white school and C) one of the few black kids who was in the class, you can probably guess how well that went.

I was small, I didn't understand, "kiddie cruelty" came into play and naturally I went home crying my eyes out. I asked my grandma and grandad (cause I stayed with them at the time while my mom was in the hospital) what we all did wrong. And that was when I learned what racism was. My mom found out shortly afterwards and pitched a 20 ton hissyfit

So I was exposed to racism fairly young and knew what it was from there - hence the question:

What was your first experience or exposure to racism (be you black, white, asian or otherwise)? If your first experience wasn't the most vivid in your memory, then what was? How did you deal with it? And lastly, how does it affect you at the age you are today?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I've been pretty lucky in dealing with any type of racism. Unfortunately, I have to say that I do hear minor racism from time to time. I'm usually exposed to stereotypical comments towards blacks such as the all-famous watermelon, chicken, etc. comments. So for the most part, the only racism I see is hearing people apply stereotypes to various ethnicities.

As for racism against my ethnicity, I can't say that I recall any time that I've personally had to deal with it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My earliest memory of it wasn't until I was eleven or twelve, I think. The city I grew up in was predominantly white and I don't think I even knew any kids who were from another race until I was in elementary school.

Anyway, in my class there was this one kid and I don't even know what race he was, but he was kind of darker skinned. It probably didn't help that he didn't really get along well with a lot of people. One day someone was arguing with him and started calling him coffee bean, or something. At the time I didn't get it.

The next day we had a big school-wide assembly where the principal spoke to us about racism and stuff like that. I think that was the first time I ever really thought about people with other colours of skin being "different".

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm another lucky one, growing up without any vivid memories of racism. The closest things I can remember weren't even direct racial comments, moreso like small talk not phrased in the best way. eg. "so is this popular back in your country? Where your people are from?" There wasn't any particular illwill in those kinds of comments, more like naive curiousity.

I'm still rather ignorant of it, having never really been exposed to it in the past. If a racial comment or implication were to ever come my way, I would take it really hard and think about it for a day or so, as a result.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Elementary school. Aboriginal students and White students called each other racial slurs, the class split up, and fights occurred between the two groups often during recess. That was Grade 6 or so. Lots of people tell me that was kids being kids. I disagree, mainly because I was involved with it. The thing was, I never did anything to Aboriginals, I was very quiet and usually kept to myself... but I guess that didn't matter...

Hmmm... It was a rough time..

I was speaking idiomatically.

It was about 2 years ago. I was on the bus going to college, and some asian students got on the bus. By this time there were only two seats remaining on the bus, and they were the ones next to me. Now the first asian student took one look at me, and urged his friend to sit next to me. He did, but as far away as possible from as he could get, they were practically sat atop one another.
When another two seats became available, they soon jumped out of their seats and moved onto the empty ones. It's as if they thought that they would catch something from me if they had to sit next to me.
I felt really uncomfortable and out of place on the bus while they were on even though I had done nothing wrong.

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This is kinda backwards but... when you go to a high school thats literally 97% white, there IS no racism.

However, those 97% were all rich, white assholes. Picture the opening credits for Whos The Boss? and you'll get the idea of the kinda place I'm talking about. WHITE SUBURBIA where anyone who isn't white and at least middle class can't be welcomed.

However, I was friends with a couple of the other three percent. Most of them were way, way more down to earth than the bottle blonde who got $10k for Christmas to get her tits done, drove a new suburban to school and never wore a shirt more than once.

FELIPE NO

Are you kidding me? I was a child racist.

When you're 6 years old and living in Louisiana, where the only black people on the news are the ones being arrested for drug-related crimes it's simple to draw these "logical" conclusions until you actually have a black friend.

In fact, you know what broke my racism? My mom showed me a picture of herself in elementary school in a class photo, and I thought she was pointing at a black girl. So I thought with that astounding kid logic, once again, that when you grow up you change races.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

My first real encounter with racism didn't come until high school here in the States when this cat who, ironically enough, was also Mexican called me a "fucking wetback" because he thought I was just not up to his level in class. I dislocated his jaw and broke 2 of his ribs, for which I received my first arrest. Luckily enough the parents probably gathered why this whole thing happened and dropped the charges, but my parents and his parents don't speak anymore... and they used to be great friends.

Now I take those comments with a grain of salt mainly to avoid getting arrested again. Just ask anyone in chat.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Hmm, from grade 1 to 3, I went to a school dominated by white kids. There was only one indian and there was only one oriental kid (me). There was an older kid that slanted his eyes with his fingers and called me 'chinese.' It was during the same incident that a teacher was around to stop him. It never happened again.

In grade 9, I was walking home with this girl and in the distance, a group of kids around my age were coming my way. After parting with the girl, I recognized three of the kids as old classmates from grade 8. One of them pointed out that one of the other guys insulted me by saying, "Chinese chicken balls." They started arguing with each other for a minute with one of my former classmates defending me. That was that.

The third time was at my old college when I was working on something in the library computer lab. There was a white guy and a black guy sitting across the room from behind me. I could've sworn they were making racial jokes about me, because I was the only asian kid there and if I recall correctly, the words were along the lines of "that chink over there...chong wong." The thing that pissed me off was that this black kid was one of those guys stressing racism. So, the black kid can make fun of asians, but others can't make fun of blacks?

The fourth time I came across racism? It happened just two months ago. I was sitting on a bench at the mall when a group of high school kids walked towards me. One of them crouched, waved and said 'hi.' Then he proceeded to say, "do you speak English?" and started bowing. How the hell was I supposed to react to that? I was actually confused. Part of me wanted to knock him out. If it was outside and people weren't around, I probably would've done just that.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

first experience I ever had with pure racism was on the old Bizarre show with john byner, with his skit called "The Bigot Family". personally though, if people ask me if I'm racist, I reply "yes I am, I hate prejudiced people and racists"

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Being Jewish, I have been subjected to racism countless times. Usually it's just the normal Jew stereotypes being thrown in my face, but other times it can get serious. Like, for instance, this time.

The racism has really tapered as I've grown larger and larger. Being a 6'1" sixteen year old kid really helps put a stop to it, for the most part. Not being afraid to fight only adds to that.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I've seen racism, but from what I can remember, it largely came from minorities (but then again, I didn't go to schools that had a huge number of whites).

As others have implied or pointed out, most of the racism came from blacks. First of all, I had a lot of black friends in school (but I lost contact with them due to going to different schools. To be fair here, I didn't stay in touch with really anyone at all), but again, most of the "stereotyping" came from minorities.

I remember getting taunted mercilessly by some hispanic kid in 6th and 7th grade. Only the intervention of his girlfriend was able to keep him from going too far (I was friends with her). A black kid often made fun of me too, but I largely shrugged it off, since I didn't really care what anyone thought of me (whether good or bad), and I remember hearing a teacher tell me that kids will do stupid things like this, and to not let it bother me.

I got my "revenge" on them by making them "bad guys" in a little comic book I drew to win some attention and admiration from my other classmates. It didn't hurt anyone by doing this, and I could "kill" them however I wanted (in my comic book of course lol). No doubt they inspired me to see the bad side of humanity

Interestingly enough, I don't remember any white kids making fun of me at all (or if they did, they did it behind my back). But the vast majority of them were richer kids, and either had cars, or at least better clothing, which often made me feel inferior (they weren't doing anything consciously as far as I could tell, but that "aura of inferiority" kind of sunk in on me, so I couldn't really relate to them much at all unless they had similar interests as myself, which most of them didn't. Growing up poor sucks when you're faced with kids who are better off socially and financially).

Sorry for going slightly OT, but I figured this would probably relate into the racism stuff.

I was speaking idiomatically.

My first lessons of racism came from my mother. I remember her telling me as a child to never kiss a black girl, and her reasoning was something about black people being greasier than white people. I heard a handful of other things like this growing up. Of course, I made friends with a few black kids in school, not really thinking anything of it.

Sometime in elementary school, we learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and slavery and such, and our teacher threw out some question like, "Would you do what he did?" And some kids immediately threw out answers, saying that black people and white people were no different, and it was wrong to keep them as slaves. At this point, I thought about why my mom would say those things about black people if they were teaching us in school that they weren't any different.

There really haven't been any instances of someone being racist towards me, however.

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I guess i'm a lucky boy, i've never encoutered racism in real life other than online.

FELIPE NO

I guess the first encounter wasn't really directly towards me. I was playing with a group of friends, 2 black girls and one hispanic boy and then all of a sudden there was a fight over a ball or something really stupid. Well it got heated between one of the girls and the guy and the guy called her a nigger.

Well she got mad (I think she slapped him and took her sister and left), but I had no idea what the heck he said then, I was pretty young and I was never exposed to any of that in my house. I never asked about it and since we all were playing together the next day it didn't seem like a big deal. I can't remember when I finally got the clue about that word, honestly. Probably near the time I went to middle school.

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I was with my Dominican friend and her mother and we were at the pool. Well my friend's mom brought a radio and she started playing Reggaeton and music along that vein. One of the pool clerks came up to us and asked us not to play that music at the pool. Well my friend's mom got angry and she asked "What if we changed it to American music?!" The guy said that if we changed to English music then it'd be okay. My friend's mom was livid and she dragged us out of there.
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I was in my English AP class during lunch (then, my friends in that class would stay and eat our lunches inside the classroom, our teacher was cool like that). Well, while my other friend were buying their lunches I was with one of my friends, a bi-racial (black/white) guy. We started talking and he said something about how we're both the same because we act white and take advanced classes. I was so absolutely shocked (my eyes probably bugged out) by him saying that, and I told him off about it. I couldn't believe he'd say something like that and I couldn't believe he'd believe it either.
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However, this may not be racism but I tend to get overly annoyed when people go "Oh, you're African? <insert clicking noises here>! Can you understand that?" and go into spiels about giraffes, monkeys and head shrinking. Oh and since I'm from Nigeria, sometimes there's idiots who start shit "Niggeria, lol!" That sort of thing annoys me without end, even though I should know better not to let that stuff affect me.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Last year I rented a room in a house in a pretty upscale neighborhood to be able to attend the nearby community college that offered more courses I needed. The family (a mom and her 13 year old son and 15 year old daughter) was really nice to me and there were no conflicts. Towards the end of my stay they were even acting like I was part of the family. But, one day I heard them talking about a neighbor's son who someone thought was dating this "dark-skinned" girl they had seen a couple of times over at his house. The punch line of the joke was that she was the maid and they all got a good laugh and kept looking at me. I felt really confused and uncomfortable and a little bit hurt even though it wasn't about me personally and I guess that's how it feels. That's about the extent of my experiences on the matter since I don't hold strangers at fault for indiscretions given the fact I don't know them.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I really can't correctly recall any racism against me at all. I grew up in a predominately Mexican school and was taken care of after school by a Mexican babysitter basically and I even ended up calling the woman who took care of me most nana.

In school I think I might've been called whiteboy and cracker but I don't remember clearly. I did get into fights but not over race, but because I was getting picked on and I was defending myself.

There was an incident where I got pulled over at my girlfriend's house and she was with me. She's Mexican and lives in a surrounding area in Tempe called Guadalupe, which is basically little Mexico. Anyways I get pulled over in my mind for no real reason. I get asked for my driver's license and insurance, he goes back to check it. My girlfriend told me that she encountered that cop before and he had made a racist comment towards her. At that moment I was just hoping the cop would slip up and say something again racist. I literally became enraged at that and would have loved to have pounded the shit out of him. He did nothing told me I was pulled over for having a headlight out, which I've been driving around for awhile at the time with it out and have passed cops before.

That's the extent of my racism experience.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

ya my first encounter with raceism was when i was about 7 or 8 and i was hanging with my black friends, one day one of my white friends (we were living in georgia at the time) said that he couldent hang out with me any more because his mom said that i was a bad person for hanging with the black kids and that hurt cuz he was one of my good friends and that was my first encounter with raceism

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I've encountered racism many times, though it was usually in the form of "ching-chang-chong", a fairly mild comment. Though a bunch of kids across the road who thought my little brother was alone (he was walking behind me a few feet away) did say that comment, and of course, I flipped. I yelled, "What did you say?! You wanna come here and say it again?!" They, being kids, were frightened shitless, though I was a little disappointed being in a multi-cultural society that this "imitation" of Chinese people still exists, given that they were Black and their parents probably encountered tons of racism before that. Of course their parents are likely to be racist too, and I've encountered many Black adults who are racist - it's almost as if they were dishing all the racism they suffered from before onto Chinese people.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

nuthing but racism here. Black hate on Hispanics, Hispanics hate on Blacks.
I have friends from both sides but there are times when I hate everyone from both sides.
I remember once in high school me and my friend who just happened to be asian were walking down the hall when this stupid little bitch bumped us and screamed out "watch out you damn immigrants!"
We both turned around to look at the stupid bitch as she just ran away from us thinking we would do something after she said that. Even though we should have ran down the hall just to annoy the shit out of her.
There was this one time when I went to burger king which happened to get my order wrong (wasn't the first time), I niicely asked for a correction in my order and the idiots at the counter were confused about my simple order of a burger with no onions or mayonnaise. They called up the manager and he started to talk to me in spanish even though I was clearly speaking english the entire time. Even when I spoke to him in english he continued to speak spanish and that when I finally said.
"I dont understand a damn thing your saying, If you havn't noticed I'm speaking english. All i fucking want is a burger with NO onions and NO mayonnaise"
He went to the back to correct my order and he was blurting out some stuff about "these latinos".

I was born in the US so I am more accustomed to english than I am with spanish. So I don't see why some people insist on thinking that just becuase your from another country you automatically don't speak english.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm a redhead. I got picked on countless times at school because of it, and by both white, black or arab people.

I'm not complaining, since it made me realize certain things about life at an early age and that it came helpful many times. What I'm saying, is that the word "Racism" is often used to describe what is nothing else than the natural law of the majority.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The closest thing to racism I've experience personally was being thrown out (rather violently) of a pub in fucking SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA, because my family is from the wrong part of Ireland. "Do you support the IRA, boy?" And then out I went.

FELIPE NO

My first experience was when I was a kid (real young...like....4 or 5), a car filled with african-american females driving side-by-side with my mother's car on the freeway, decided they wanted to chuck pennies into our vehicle screaming all kinds of hateful comments. I don't remember what they said and then I had no idea what it meant. All I remember was the cut I had right below one of my eyes from one of the pennies they threw. Later in life (I was about 7 or 8) I was at a local recreation center, and I was playing with one of my friends (he was black). When his mother came to pick him up, she snagged his arm with anger, turned to me and said "white trash, stay away from my son". Never did I do or say anything wrong. I was not a bad influence or anything. I was simply white...and playing with her son. So I called her a hateful bitch as she walked away (I did know what she meant). It felt great, and I laugh about it now when I think back to it. That never did keep her son from hanging out with me (he was a good kid).

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?