Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Indoctrination of Racism
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 10:37:00 -0700

In a message dated 23 Jul 92  21:01:02, Janis Maria Cortese wrote:

JM> I've been indoctrinated in the mindset that black men are dangerous and 
JM> to be treated like nitroglycerin since I was a kid.  No noe just 
JM> came up to me and said it; I saw it on TV and saw it in the way people

I guess I got lucky.  I was brought up on Long Island, and as it happened, even
though we were in the heart of the suburbs and *NOT* in a "black" or
"mixed-race" neighborhood (I later learned there were a few of these nearby), I
lived very close to a black family, and during my elementary-school years, my
best friends included two black boys, one white girl, and one Puerto Rican boy. 
I didn't really think about it at the time... boy, when I say it now, it sounds
like something from a late-sixties movie or something.

 JM> This is why I'm mighty suspicious of men who say, "What do you mean I'm
 JM> sexist?  I've read a Mary Daly book."  Come ON.  We're talking about
 JM> undoing a LIFETIME of indoctrination.  It just ain't that easy.  From

One wonders if there is any way to get over this type of indoctrination.  Are we
doomed by our childhood experiences?  Now, I can look back and be grateful that
I didn't even know that there WERE "black neighborhoods" for many years, even
though I lived near some.  But what about others who were brought up in a
different way?  My wife was brought up in the Midwest and didn't have any
blacks, Jews, Orientals, heck, even Italians were rare!

 JM> racism, but *I* am totally liberated and unaffected by the 
 JM> racist and sexist signals of our time."

If I sound like I'm saying that, sorry.  I'm not.  I'm just being grateful that,
due to sheer luck and an open-minded mother, I didn't get a lot of the
indoctrination until later, and hopefully it means it has less of a hold on me. 
No credit for me if that's true, I didn't do it....

 JM> Right.  Excuse me while I collapse in laughter.  Anyone who can, in a few
 JM> years, fight off a mechanism that has been grinding away in western
 JM> "civilization" for the last thousand years is really kidding themselves.
 JM> You can't do it.  No one can. 

Agreed.  But the real question, how DOES one do it?  This is subtle, sticky,
sneaky stuff.  You may easily THINK you're free of it, but it may be lurking
below the surface, and show up in subconscious patterns of behavior.  For
instance, the much-quoted statistic that women get interrupted more often than
men.  Men don't do this CONSCIOUSLY.  (Setting aside for the moment the
admittedly-prejudiced pigs; we're trying to reach the 'almost-liberated' people
now, right?)  How does one learn to reach down and pull stuff like that out at
the roots?  I can watch myself to see if I'm about to interrupt a woman, and
consider if I would have interrupted a man in the same situation.  This takes up
a lot of my CPU time and distracts me from the conversation.  But even if I do
it, what about the NEXT statistic someone quotes?  Obviously, I'm treating the
symptoms...

 JM> Blessings,
 JM> Janis
 
Brightest blessings to you too :)

From: radzy@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Lynne Radzykewycz)
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 01:38:43 GMT
Subject: Re: SEXES (was "something I just wanted to complain about")
Organization: the HP Corporate notes server