Wednesday, July 15, 2009

First Prejudice



He Isn't One Of Us


Since I am a member of the Caucasian Anglo-Saxon race, being discriminated against was never something that was a big deal when I was growing up. We were the ones that were always taught by our parents to be tolerant and not look down or act differently toward others. the only contact I ever had with prejudice or racism was from the other children in grade school who didn't like that my father was a higher rank than theirs, or the occasional racial explicative uttered by the children who didn't have 'good' parents.

There wasn't anything in my racial or ethnic background that was going to hinder me. After all, I was a white man in a white man's country. The sky was the limit. At least that is what I thought.

I grew up in a very guarded and controlled world as we moved from one military base to another. It was all "Father Knows Best" and the "Brady Bunch", whether you liked it or not. So when I eventually flew the nest and went to college there were some surprises in store.

I went to college at Oregon State University (OSU). It was an angelic little place, in a small town nestled in the Willamette Valley, between the Cascade Mountains and the Oregon Coast Range. The school and town could have been drawn by Norman Rockwell. But school, by it's very nature, is a learning process and what I learned at OSU was mostly in the realm of social interaction and not from books or professors.

Oregon State was mostly populated with kids from Portland and some from Eugene. Many of these youngsters had never left home before, much less left the state. Their idea of being worldly was the trip they took to Disneyland in 1966. So I found it rather odd, while attending many a college party, that I got asked the same questions over and over.

1) What part of town (Portland) do you live in?
2) What high school (in Portland) did you attend?
3) What does your father do for a living and where does he work?

I got asked these questions repeatedly during my first year in college and it finally dawned on me why they kept coming up. These kids from Portland were trying to pigeon hole me into a category that they could understand. Finding out where you lived denoted your economic class in their world. Was I from the elite part of town or from the trailer park on the south side of the railroad tracks.

The school I would have attended was another form of categorizing, since some schools were considered 'cooler' than others and there were lots of scholastic rivalries in Portland. You didn't want to leave town and start associating with folks that were your previous rival.

Finally, where your father worked denoted economic class, a certain amount of clout (lawyer, CEO, architect) and also whether or not your parents were divorced. Living with your divorced mother who was a secretary wasn't the same as living with your married Aerospace Engineer daddy and his blond trophy wife.

These three things pretty much summed up the type of person you were and whether or not the person asking the questions wanted to associate with you. They were a sort of test to determine if you were cool enough and acceptable enough and they weren't timid about asking. It was like a police officer asking for your license and registration.

Since I didn't fit in any of their categories my peers didn't really know what to make of me. They sort of put a question mark next to my name and treated me like a foreign exchange student. I didn't fit into their neat and compartmentalized world. Because I knew more than they did and didn't have any preconceived notions, I was discriminated against.

It was my first taste of prejudice. It is an ugly thing, and I really feel sorry for the folks that don't realize that they even have it.

8 comments:

  1. Interesting. I wonder how much of this my kids will experience when they head off to college. I know that here they are catagorized as "base kids" and have been taunted for not being a townie.

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  2. Oh please. Just as ugly as racism? Racism kept children out of school altogether! And 2/3rds of the people asking just wanted to know where you were from - oh how terrible! People ask such to learn. Yes there's some 'categorization' going on, differences are driven out - and sometimes it feels mean, but everyone experiences it on some level (ask the wealthy, as soon as people find out they're rich they're expected to pay more or thought of as having everything handed to them - boo hoo!)

    So that's my rant. Publish it or not. Mostly I just think you're silly for thinking you have it as bad as a black child from 1966 who couldn't even get into the good schools. That just made you sound whiney.

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  3. When Andy Warhol ventured to new york he would just lie about where he came from (the midwest). Deny the whole thing.

    I use to do that. Say I was from a city much larger than were I came from. Sometimes make up different background or name.

    Just lying cause I don't care to be drawn into some stupid game where people judge me because of where I come from or what I do. Plus, when one grows up in certain ways, there can be a bit of shame about it all.

    But lately, being here, in my home town, I find myself developing a bit of pride. Find myself wanting to buy t-shirts from local resturants.

    Also

    i am cultivating my accent.

    Purposefully peppering my language with local sayings and such. Tilting the rythm and pacing of my speech. I am starting to own where I came from and where I am.

    It's too damn bad I couldn't do this at an earlier age. It's too bad that it's taken me this long to realize no matter what box we present ourselves in, the real person is underneath.

    Wearing the local colors adds flavor to it all.

    ;)

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  4. Princess: True, it can take many forms.

    Mary Alice: Not to worry. Military Brats are soooo much more prepared for the real world than 'townie' kids.

    Annonymous: Thanks for the honest critic, but I think you may have missed the point. I wasn't intending to whine about the issues. If anything, it was to point out my dissappointment and sadness at how many 'affluent' people are prejudiced and don't even know it. It is about ethnicity or social class, but our inability to see outside of own small clicks and see the bigger picture.

    Holly: It is interesting that you bring this up, because I have done the same thing in different instances. I have often times withheld my job description or where I work, simply because I don't want to talk about work or have to give advise at parties or get together. The internet has sort of fostered that. I don't know to many people that use instant messaging whose profile reads; "over weight, balding, unemployed, and living in my parents basement".....it is usually something much more flattering but totally ficticious or false.

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  5. I'll agree that discrimination is alienating in any case. Being poor never helped me socially, but my neighbors who are not only poor but also happen to be minorities have even more difficulties than I do in a place where the population is 97.4% white.

    It never feels good to be discriminated against for any reason. But having authorities treat you like you're not as important as everyone else is a whole different picture. Just trust me on that.

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  6. well said. I always try to make my son aware that there is a thing in this world called bigotry, and that he should never be a part of it..

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  7. Although it was the first, I doubt it was the last.

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  8. It's funny, I wouldn't have thought of Portland of having that kind of small town feel to it that way. I mean, I've only been to Portland once, and I was 12 at the time, maybe 11 so I don't know anything about it. But it's odd - I think of that as a sort of small town thing to do, categorize people that way. And it IS very sad that people that have prejudices and they don't even know it. But I think we ALL have prejudices we don't realize until we're confronted with them.

    That said, I don't think having a question mark by your name is *necessarily* a bad thing. Finding your niche is a hard thing, especially when you're facing an environment where everyone's had their own niche before they even got to school. But hopefully there were some people there who saw your question mark status as a positive, who were ready to make some new friends and have some new experiences.

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