Thoughts about racism

What makes someone a racist? This question has bothered me for a long time now.

I have friends and sadly some family members back home who say the strangest things. They appear to be normal, reasonable people. But something sets them off and their lurking racism (or antisemitism) comes flaring up.

Now, before you defend anyone I know the difference (or at least I hope I do) between someone making a racist joke specifically to get under my liberal skin and them making blatant racist comments. And let's gloss over the idea that someone can make racist jokes and still not be a racist themselves (I'm not 100% sure I believe that's possible, but that discussion is for another day).

What I want to discuss are real racist attitudes that come from some of the nicest people you know.

Where does that come from?

It was suggested to me that someone I know who says some of the shittiest, nastiest racist comments I've ever heard must've got that way because he was bullied in school and that the bullies were black. I dunno. Does stuff like that really happen? I know a friend who went away to college being very open-minded and accepting of all people shocking me with some racist comments years later when we met up. Now, these comments weren't even close to being as foul as what I've heard elsewhere but they also weren't even made in a jokey jokey kind of way at all; they were serious and definitely more on the racist side of the line than not.

Had college turned this person into a mild racist? And if so, was it caused by the white crowd around them, or was it a reaction to negative events in their life? Or... were they always like that and just were better at holding it in because we went to a very very racially mixed high school?

I had always assumed that racism was bred - you hear your father make enough jokes about "Mexicans", blacks, Jewish people (or in Japan Koreans and Chinese), and eventually you start to make the same jokes yourself. As you get older you hear more real racism and that sticks, too.

I have always considered myself lucky that I was surrounded by good and open-minded people of many races from a fairly early age, so that no matter how much bad stuff I heard from a few sources above I was able to see how ignorant it was. I also have to be thankful for my mother especially, who has about the most color-blind outlook on life as anyone I've ever met.

But as I get older I think my assumption when I was younger that all racism comes from parents was wrong. You can learn hateful attitudes at any age. It's really sad that it happens, but it does.

OK this post has gone on long enough, so I'll close with this. One thing that has really shocked me over the past few years is how much vitriolic, spiteful homophobic and racist slurs you hear when playing games online. I know a lot of the kids playing games are simply repeating comments they've heard from others, and may not even know what they're talking about. But racism IMO is like using a fakey voice at work to sound friendly to people - use it long enough and it becomes your real voice. If you say racist shit enough times, I think it ends up sticking to you. So just stop.