Yes, I am
And I think I know why, but it took a bit of digging to figure it out.

I'm ginger (or was when I had hair...), have needed spectacles since pre-school, and am so white as to be nearly albino. I'm also a nerd, a geek, and I was a major swot at school. I came in for quite a lot of stick for a variety of reasons - gingernut, coppernob, Duracell, specky, four-eyes - the lot. Oddly enough, it all stopped when I hit six foot tall and started studying Shotokan. These days, I'm a skinhead, 6'4" biker and it's amazing how many people decide to go pick on someone else.

But my prejudices are of a different root. I don't like black people.

Worse still, I know that's wrong on a logical and reasonable level - I'm not stupid, a Daily Mail reader or a member of the BNP. I don't think they're coming here and taking our jobs, nor are they out to rape all white women. I know that's all media bollocks.

So where'd it come from? Yeah, it beat the shit out of me too. But I did some mental digging and I think I have it sussed. I grew up in a tiny village in Lincolnshire. No black people around. No ethnics at all. No Chinese, Asian, nothing. Nothing except pure-white Lincolnshire farmers. We didn't have a TV, because it was the 60s, they were expensive and my folks just couldn't afford one. So all I knew was the tiny village world around me, apart from books.

And I didn't think black people were real. I'd read about them in such wonderful tomes as Little Black Sambo, and had kind of grouped them in with Noddy and Big Ears as fictional. The first black person I remember seeing was aged around 8, at a friend's house, and seeing an episode of Star Trek, with Nichelle Nichols as Uhura. I didn't even realise *she* was real, I thought it was just another clever make-up job like the green girl, or the blue man in the end credits!

Then I read a lot of my Dad's pulp fiction - Tarzan, who is one of the least PC characters in C20th fiction - he regards black people as sub-humans (because one of them did kill his mum), target practice, kills them for sport, and on at least one occasion as a potential food source. There were also the Sanders books by Edgar Wallace, featuring the adventures of a brave, stiff-upper-lipped colonial type who spends his time pacifying a bunch of thieving, murdering and fairly amoral tribes. These all formed large parts of my world-view.

Then there were my Dad's war stories - he'd been in the Egyptian police before the war, spoke Arabic like a native, and although he'd had many friends out there, still pretty much classed the lot of them as 'wogs'.

As I grew up, still with no black kids or Indian kids in any of my schools, I saw the riots on TV in South Africa in the '80s - huge lines of scruffy black guys, waving makeshift weapons and chanting something which clearly translated as 'You're going home in an ambulance!' and all I could think of was that apart from swapping the leopard-skin loincloths for dirty t-shirts, these people could have stepped out of a Sanders book, as it all seemed to be tribal warfare. Stupid black people killing other stupid black people for no reason that made any sense to a 15-year-old white boy.

The single incident that finally cemented it in place, though, was an article on TV about how they don't really show the horrors of war, and they showed footage of a cameraman/reporter team, and the reporter walks about 100 yards up the road to talk to a guy with a gun. The cameraman films everything, and sees the reporter be made to kneel down, then lie down, and then get shot in the back of the head, all in the space of about 30 seconds. And I remember thinking, "That's not a soldier, that's not a black man, that's just a fucking monkey with a gun."

Does it affect my daily life - no, not really. The office I work in has a generous sprinkling of all ethnic types - Caribbean, African, Indian, Oriental, and I attempt to treat everyone with the same level of professionalism. My son has black and asian friends, who have always been welcomed in our house, nor was he ever discouraged from going to theirs. I know it's wrong, and I know it's irrational, but I think it's too deeply-rooted for me to do anything about it at this stage of my life. All I can do is make sure that this is one set of memes that do not get passed on.

Because my son's got enough problems being ginger, specky, a geek and left-handed as well.

Apologies for length and lack of teh funny, but it was actually quite cathartic to write it all out.
(Leo Sasquatch hates being the grown-up, Sun 4 Apr 2010, 12:56, 11 replies)

In these
PC days that was a really interesting read, kudos on not passing it on to your nipper. Click
(Obi wanker nobi Its not a bug, its an unexpected feature, Sun 4 Apr 2010, 13:54, closed)

That story rules.
*click*
(MSB Load universe into cannon. Aim at brain. Fire., Sun 4 Apr 2010, 15:14, closed)

Ha!

Your son being left-handed is your punishment for being a racist.

And "Sanders Of The River" eh? I thought I was the only living person who'd actually read all of those. Takes me back...

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sun 4 Apr 2010, 15:28, closed)

Mmm, tricky
I don't really know what you can do about that, apart from getting hypnosis or something(?)
( Ennui loves you, Sun 4 Apr 2010, 17:17, closed)

errrr
this was very honest of you and I sort of respect you for that, but it's still wrong, you know.
(jennymnemonic, Sun 4 Apr 2010, 18:27, closed)

I think he knows it's wrong...
...but since he's not actually letting anyone he encounters realise how he feels I guess it's really only his problem :)
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Sun 4 Apr 2010, 20:10, closed)

Doesn't seem that wrong.
He's got very deep seated, learned from childhood opinions that he realises aren't valid ones to have and doesn't act on them.
He makes an effort to disguise them, and refuses to allow something like that to be passed on to his son.
He's making a very solid effort to be a better person and a good father.

What's the problem here?
(Scritty Bakerman., Sun 4 Apr 2010, 21:23, closed)

Exactly what I was trying to say :)

(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Mon 5 Apr 2010, 21:48, closed)

interesting reading and (to me) understandable, the fact you have thought about it shows you are not inherently racist but have been raised in a time where these differences were accepted as fact and not challenged.
(LarksaLordy, Sun 4 Apr 2010, 21:45, closed)

an honest
and brave post. We all have a duty to not pass this sort of stuff on to our kiddlies. Insight is a powerful thing even if it is uncomfortable.
(W3BOPLASTY, Mon 5 Apr 2010, 7:20, closed)

You remind me a bit of my mum and dad
Both 'liberals' to their hearts, but grew up in war-time britain with no experience of mixing with other races. They brought us up to be Liberals too and, living in North London, we DID have plenty of ethnic groups in our schools - especially Ugandan Asians.

So, hats off to you - you aren't a racist, you ARE prejudiced, but you have the sense and the self-knowledge to never act on those prejudices - that's way better than some ignorant bastard that is racist and doesn't mind being racist.

I might give you a click - but I haven't decided yet.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 9:58, closed)