Many minority students at Weber State University are often faced with comments like, “You should sit where you belong” or “Well, that’s just the way they behave.”
For WSU junior Jason Sikler, these comments are all too common.
“I’m black,” he said. “The girl I’m dating is white. Get over it. It’s 2010 and I’d like to think we’re all over the whole racism thing … but it’s clearly not over.”
During a recent visit to a Salt Lake Bees baseball game, Sikler had the opportunity to sit in special corporate seats with his girlfriend. Before the game began, an older white female turned around and commented to Sikler that he was clearly in the wrong seat and needed to move.
“My girlfriend asked her what she meant by ‘clearly in the wrong seats’ and the woman said, ‘Well, you’re blaaa … you just don’t belong there.’ I was dumbfounded. I tried to explain to this woman that I was, in fact, in the correct seats, and that’s when she went to get one of the ushers.”
The usher checked Sikler’s tickets and told the woman she needed to mind her own business, but Sikler said he was still embarrassed and enraged at being told he didn’t belong.
According to Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a well-known author, psychiatrist and Harvard educator, a critical issue still facing the world today is racism.
“Racism can destroy us as individuals and ultimately destroy the world,” he stated. “One of the reasons why it has historically been so lethal and devastating is that when played out unharnessed, the bottom line is genocide. Once you know that racism leads to genocide, and frequently that is one of its missions, then you can spread out and kind of tabulate the other manifestations on a different level of the genocidal doctrine. Racism plays itself out institutionally in the way we deal with people.”
WSU senior Jesus Montero has also faced racism and ignorance. After a political discussion at a local coffee shop, where the topics of tax law, immigration and Arizona had been raised, a man confronted Montero and asked, “Do you even pay taxes?”
Montero tried to explain to the man that he was born in the United States and did pay taxes, but the situation turned violent and the man took a swing at him. The police were called, but not until Montero had been beaten for a few minutes and spit upon.
While explaining to a police officer what had happened, Montero saw two men pointing at him and saying, “That’s just how they behave. Typical Mexican.”
“I’m not even Mexican,” Montero said. “My mom is from Brazil, my dad is from Chile, and I was born here. Just because I’m a little darker-skinned doesn’t mean I’m a Mexican.”
Racial encounters can even happen within families.
“I’m biracial,” said WSU freshman Whitney Lee. “My mother is white and my father is black. During the first year of my life, my grandparents refused to talk to my mother because she had ‘mixed blood’ with a black man.”
This racism followed Lee into elementary, junior high and even high school.
“I’ve been called … a lot of horrible things. ”
However, Lee said she is determined not to let hatred rule her life.
“These words have no bearing on who I am or who I will become.”
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Reading your comments, it sounds to me like you were also a victim of racism. I'm sorry you had to deal with that with your job search and your children's scholarship, but no one should get over racism.
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