A Lack Of A Lot Of Formal Education And Racial Tolerance Are Not Mutually Exclusive

[DemocratSinceBirth]

My dad had a ninth grade education and he was one of the most racially tolerant, color blind people I have ever known... He dropped out of school at fifteen to support his family during the Great Depression... He then became a Golden Gloves boxer, a bartender, a disabled veteran, a candy store owner, and finally a construction worker...

We moved to Deltona, Florida from New York in 1970...Florida was a very different place then...My father got a job doing light construction work... On his first day on the job he sat down to have lunch with his African American co-workers... They told him the white workers would shun him if he continued to do that...He also made some African American friends who we would visit in DeLand...DeLand was very segregated then... It still is in some ways... When we visited, there weren't any white folks in sight but my dad didn't mind... When they visited us some of our white neighbors would make outright racist comments...

Conversely I have heard racist and anti-Semitic comments from so called educated people; people with PhDs and tenured professorships at major universities...I have heard American University (AU) called (AJew)... I have heard The New Republic called The Jew Republic; probably because many of their editors were Jewish... I have heard a professor lament how Jewish students arrived at AU in their limousines...

I was in grad school at Florida State University during the 1984 election...One of my fellow grad students, who was getting much better grades than me and was smarter, would make racist comments about Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan and imitate them in his best "Holy Mackerel" voice... Like most grad students he also taught introductory classes... He would make disparaging remarks about his African American students... He probably would have made more insensitive statements if he knew me and my buddy, Jay, would have been really offended...

Being smart and being a good person or tolerant are not synonomous...

[melody]

1. My grandparents similarly

They each had a high school education (which was exceedingly rare back then in their region, but not any great shakes in terms of education) and they were the two most accepting, compassionate people I've ever known. They had friends of every race and they embraced my gay cousin when no one else in the family did. They were also from Arkansas.

[redqueen]

2. Thanks.

Whole lotta generalizin goin on here.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. Where Did I Generalize?

I'll sign an affidavit that I heard every bigoted comment I cited... I can even name the professors and grad students who made them...Those things stick with you... I forgot...One of my fellow grad students was an alcoholic who made anti-semitic comments that would have made David Duke blush... Oh, and one of my professors called a fellow grad student a "professional Jew" behind his back...


on edit- what's remarkable is the pool of professors I knew wasn't that large...

[redqueen]

6. Sorry... not you!

I meant the stuff you're addressing... assuming college-educated = more tolerant, and that sort of thing. That's the generalizing I was talking about... not the OP.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. Oh

I can read data... As education goes up racist, homophobic, xenophobic, anti-semitic, etcetera attitudes goes down...But there are still a lot of bigoted educated folk and tolerant not so educated folks...

I guess the bigoted and anti-semitic remarks stayed with me because they were people I thought to be my intellectual betters...

[sandnsea]

3. I agree, it's not education

It's the same thing that causes southeasterners to get riled up about illegal immigrants and Indian reservations, the same thing that caused the "Irish Need Not Apply" signs. It's easier to keep the status quo than to change. People have gotten used to women in charge, but still not minorities. We're just going to have to keep confronting the stereotypes and telling the truth about how people are being pitted against each other.

[Mass]

4. Thanks

[CatsDogsBabies]

7. My parents had high school

diplomas and were from working class, immigrant families. They were not racist, nor were they religious bigots, nor were they anti-education. I think it is fair however to be critical towards social situations in which racism is more than tolerated. Yes, racism exists everywhere in this country, but in some places it is more acceptable. I have lived in the Upper Midwest, the deep South, and the Northeast. There are regional differences, but this doesn't mean there aren't racists every where. I heard people on the radio today saying outright they wouldn't vote for a black candidate. I think this is wrong no matter where they live. The fact that they live in WV is not an excuse. I am sure there are many good people in WV, and I am sure that people with racist views have other qualities about them which are good, but this also doesn't mean the racism itself should be condoned.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. Yeah

I have met racists from every walk of life....

Sad...