tell you what, if you're white and you want to see some really serious racism in action, today, not 100 years ago. Come to the projects in Chicago and go around asking random black people for directions. Good luck.
I am white and I have traveled all through the south and through Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. I have seen racists of all races. I judge people as individuals, and I have lived close to 50 years now, working in restaurant kitchens, searching out BBQ and Latin and Asian foods in predominately black and Asian and Hispanic neighborhoods since my father took me into BBQ restaurants in the ghetto when I was a kid, to buying supplies when working as a chef from Asian grocery stores, to fixing computers for people. I’ve worked alongside all races from low-income menial work to high paid events, and I’ve done this in racially-charged areas. I have been accused of being racist because I am white, and I have met people I wanted nothing to do with. I was adopted into a family that was white and white mixed with Choctaw. My grandfather was born in Indian Territory as a Choctaw and got an Indian allotment which granted him land in Southeast Oklahoma. He married a white woman and was the postmaster and ran his farm and was well respected, dying in the 1970s. My adoptive father is a white man who grew up in Oklahoma in the 30s-70s, and he is one racist son of a bitch. I grew up hearing the N-word used as common everyday talk. I grew up in Tulsa, which is still very half-white and half-black divided, but I went to school with kids of other races and we learned together and we played on football teams together, and we didn’t have a problem with each other due to race. I saw racism all my life directed from white people at all other races in private, at the same time that we visited their restaurants and went to church with some of them and were polite in society. But I also had KKK pamphlets dropped on my cars because there was a black family that lived across the street from us in 1993, and I had cars broken into by black teenagers when I lived in cheap housing at 23rd and Robinson in Oklahoma city because it was all I could afford.
I regularly gave cooks and dishwashers rides home at night into the projects, and I’ve bought weed from people of all races in the projects as well. I had my high school letter jacket stollen out of my locker in high school and it was found in a black player’s locker who was younger than me, and I couldn’t tell if he was scared he’d been caught stealing or if it was honest fear in his eyes and he’d been set up like he claimed, so I backed down and didn’t fight him like I wanted to, because I didn’t know if it was theft or racism, because I had seen both.
I have never been in a racial fight in any of my time, but I’ve fought more than a few white people I thought were my friends when they bullied or they tried to steal from me. I was called fat until I showed them that fat kids are pretty strong and they will beat your ass if you try and steal their Halloween candy. I have been a bouncer, a bartender, a line cook, an executive chef, and I have never tolerated or had problems with racial or other bullying in any of my staff. I have never backed down from a fight and I will hurt someone who fucks with the ones I love. This is how I saw the world and was told by my grandfather to act. This is what I have taught my children. I do not tolerate racism and I treat people as individuals.