On Thursday, September 22nd, the Dr. Phil Show focused on the theme of racism. I was pleased, because rarely do you see this topic addressed in the mainstream media. He interviewed a racist white man whose daughter was pregnant and expecting a biracial child. He spoke with an African-American man who was accused of acting "too white". And he interviewed an African-American woman whose daughter has been missing since 1999, and discussed at length the "pretty white girl" syndrome, in which young, attractive, middle-class white girls who go missing are covered at length in the media while there is no coverage of young women of color (think Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, Natalie Holloway).
I felt this was an excellent show that tackled a sensitive topic with candor. I'm glad that finally someone talked about the things that our society is so loathe to talk about. I wanted to post something on the Dr. Phil discussion board, but when I went there, I was shocked to see numerous posts of this ilk:
NO I AM NOT A RACIST
I TRUELY BELIEVE BLACKS ARE RACIST TRUELY. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY BLACKS ATTACK WHITES .WHITES LOST EVERYTHING THEY HAD AND THEY DIED IN THE HURRICANE AS WELL AS BLACKS. DO BLACKS NOT REALIZE WHITES SUFFER TO. ALOT OF WHITES ARE AS POOR AND IN NEED AS THEY ARE. AND TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH BLACKS GET ALOT MORE BENIFITS FROM THE GOVERMENT AND STATES THEN POOR WHITES. I WOULD LOVE FOR DR. PHIL TO TALK ABOUT POOR WHITES AND SHOW THAT WHITES SUFFER TO. IT IS NOT FAIR TO SHOW ONLY BLACKS WHO ARE POOR . SHOW THE WHITES TO.GRANDMAFUZ
This is but one example. Each post that echoed this sentiment would start off with "I'm not a racist, but..." Frankly, these people just don't get it. It was as if the entire message the show was trying to convey went in one ear and out the other. But what's scary is that I wonder how many people truly feel that way. I can sit here and think to myself, well she's just an uneducated person who can't even spell, what does she know? But I'm not that naive that I don't know that there are a LOT of educated people who also think these thoughts--and they just put a more politically correct, educated spin on it. It's scary to me to think, am I in the minority in my way of thinking? Do most people in the United States share the same sentiments as Grandmafuz? Am I out of touch because I surround myself with those who think like me?
Then there were the posts (written much more articulately, I must say, and not in all caps) which were in response to these ridiculous diatribes. Many of them would call them on the carpet and basically tell them that by virtue of the fact that they wrote what they wrote, they were racist.
I was at a party a couple of weeks ago and an acquaintance who I hadn't seen in a while asked me what I'd been up to. I told him I was still doing cultural competency training. He responded, "We're still doing that shit?" At first I was taken aback by his response, but I think he meant that here it is 2005 and we still need training on how to get along with people who are different than us.
Judging from the posts on Dr. Phil's discussion board, we have a long, long way to go.
