Insensitive white girl

My buddy Leanne recently told me that she is pondering posting on her blog about the Green Movement and Racial (capital R) politics. Her points were very engaging and I won't elaborate because she might decide to post her thoughts in future.

This is a tricky subject. We all know that online comments can anonymous, unkind, and an author's intentions can be misconstrued. Her hesitancy to post inspired me to reflect on times in the past when I have been called a racist.

One particularly memorable time was during an attempted beat-down by girl at Hopi High. She wanted to beat me up for being the only lonely little white girl in our school! A bit unfair I thought.

Another time I was on a anti-racism PBS show for teens and we were all asked to respond to a question about seeing racial color. Some girl said that it is wrong to notice anybody's skin color. I said that I certainly notice skin color, and hair color, and eye color, and the number of heads a person has, because these things are descriptive and obvious to any casual observer. But I qualified that I try to examine my pre-conceptions and not let my own ignorance mandate my behavior.

The other girl stood up and called me a racist bitch. End of PBS taping! The moderators made the two of us have a teen crisis intervention. Here was the nugget of truth I gleaned from the intervention. The girl who yelled at me was a stupid girl.

Here is another racial incident. I was in a sculpting class at the Illinois Institute of Art and I mentioned that the clay we were using was "Skin Toned" and a hispanic dude glared at me and said "The phrase is 'Flesh Toned', not everybody is white like you chica."

He had a good point there. That one was my bad.