Some time before now while at work, a customer questioned me
about my nose ring, “what’s that tumor in your nose?” he asked. I replied that
it was a nose piercing and he then he says, “you like people putting holes in
you?” I laughed it off, but I was very uncomfortable, because he kept poking the lioness. He keeps going, “so if I
were to shoot you, that would be ok?” I say, “no. that’s not the same thing”. Jesus.
I think back on it, and I get disturbed, because (1.) he was
being evil and I wish I would have been evil back and (2.) because he was an
older white man and I am a young black woman. Losing my job over such a grain
of sand as this would have never been worth it in any lifetime. For some reason I feel like had it been any of
my other coworkers who have their noses pierced, they would not have run into
such harassment. And I felt very harassed and threatened. It was so
unnecessary. Maybe this guy had a serious issue with piercings, but I was
leaning more towards the color of my skin bothers him. Or maybe not. Still
probably.
And then I started thinking about the whole idea of racism.
People hating other people because of the color of their skin, something one
has absolutely no control over. I’m confused. Speaking from my own personal
experience and race here: Conclusions are being drawn about me based on this
alone. People don’t bother to get to know me as an equally human being. It
sucks. It’s life. I hate to pull the race card, but it’s a thing. It was made a
thing quite a long time ago, and we are are still being given a hard time for a
choice we didn’t make. So it’s something a lot of us automatically go to when
interactions between people of other colors occurs and goes unnecessarily
horrible. Maybe I’m making wild assumptions about a strange man comparing body
piercing to hypothetically shooting someone, but I mean…it’s weird. I just pray
that one day the human species will evolve beyond such things and unity will
become second nature. :P
No comments:
Post a Comment