The Crazy Rants of Samantha BurnsNot that there is anything wrong with that...
I was in an Indian restaurant, one with amazing food I might add, with my children sitting around the table enjoying a relaxing meal. The restaurant is fairly small and personable, so an invitation or a greeting from another table is not unexpected in such an environment.
A conversation was struck up by another couple who entered the restaurant whom just had to know the ancestry of my children, which I must admit is fairly hard to pin down since they don’t look exactly like any particular stereotypical group. Their immediate guess was they were from Israel or from somewhere in the Mediterranean.
Pleasantly, I told them my children were a mixture of Caucasian bloodline from England and France and possibly Spain, First Nations, and black. Immediately they jumped in and declared "you mean African American; we don’t call people black in Canada." I couldn’t resist the quick retort that my ex is from the US and she calls herself and her family black. For me, saying black was natural since it's what my ex used and I hardly think she was using a demeaning term to describe herself.
Admittingly, I was a bit taken aback. Was I all this time degrading my own children by referring to them as having black ancestry instead of African American? I love my children; I don't believe I'm a racist. What is wrong here?
Now this is the trouble we’ve come to as a society, we’ve morphed into an ultra-sensitive society paranoid of offending anyone. Historically, we’ve called groups by different titles throughout the years and suddenly the title becomes so prevalent it becomes deemed racist or undignified of that group.
I’m not even sure how to refer to my own ancestry. Am I part Indian, Native, Indigenous or First Nations or should I refer to my Iroquois tribe or what is the correct term today? The story I was always taught is that Indian is degrading since the first settlers mistook the indigenous population as being from India and thus the term Indian was born out of a mistake.
The same is true of blacks. Believe it or not my ex’s birth certificate contains the vile N word as her race description in clear black and white print. This contemptible term has morphed into black and African American, back to black and even back to black people calling other black people that N word I would never say.
Perhaps the trouble is not with the words themselves, but the history we are desperate to move away from. To use the old fashioned terms historically associated with a racist time would be to in some way condone racist beliefs.
Now the phrase in the subject "not that there is anything wrong with that", is a variance of the same issue we face with labels. This phrase might be used to say something like "Oh, she's dating that black guy, what's his name? Not that there is anything wrong with that" or "What a waste, he's gay - not that there's anything wrong with that."
When will the day arrive when we can stop using the phrase "Not that there is anything wrong with that..." Most of us have used it at one time or another, and most of us feel that if we do not say this statement we might be labelled a racist. I seem to recall a Seinfeld episode talking about this very subject, where they could talk about any subject they wanted so long as they added that ugly statement.
Why do I think it's an ugly statement? Because it shows that as a society we have not moved beyond our historical racism. Truthfully, we have not erased racism, and I’m not sure if we ever will in my life time.
Political correctness of removing anything offensive from being said is not the correct way to end racism. Political correctness forces people to watch what they say, constantly think about race/etc. as to not be offensive to anyone, and force a witch hunt against anyone who crosses the line, even if accidental. I ask: Is this the way to build bridges, to repair the wrongs of history? Should I be constantly thinking my children are part black as an overriding factor when I speak?
Mind you, some people are truly offensive in the way they speak of others. They should be condemned, but let's move beyond disclaimers everywhere people! Must we put a stipulation on every spoken phrase or be assumed an immediate racist?
Want to end racism? The solution is rather simple: integration. So long as we live divided lives from one another, fail to outreach, fail to live as a whole community and fail to communicate as a common people we will never learn from one another and end racism. Racism breads in ignorance and fear of those we do not know and have come to love.
"Love thy neighbour" seems to take on a whole new meaning in this context. Just so you are aware, I’m not an overly religious person - not that there's anything wrong with that...
Update: After reading Samantha's response, I realize I should clarify one point. I didn’t mean integration in the sense of becoming one culture thus forgetting our unique traditions but integration in the sense we stop living in our bubbles and communicate with other cultures living amongst us.
