In the American Air

~ Clarissa

I tried telling Klara the story of my school observation.

“Everybody at that school was African American,” I said.

“So what?” she immediately interrupted. “There’s nothing wrong with that. They are people, too!”

What is it, folks? Do Americans imbibe it with the air? Is it an instinct to react this way to any mention of black people? There was nothing in my demeanor or affect when I delivered that line that was negative. I had a good experience at that school as evidenced by my earlier posts. My kid grew up observing me with my friend from Africa. I organized parties at our house where everybody except us was black. She has no reason to suspect me of bad attitudes towards black people.

I witnessed this years ago when my friend from Latvia said in front of her homeschooled American son that the best basketball players are black and he reacted like she’d announced she was joining the Ku Klux Klan. “Yours will be like that, too,” she told me and I thought she was full of it.

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Published by Clarissa

8 thoughts on “In the American Air”

  1. Many Americans are terrified to notice that different ethnic groups have different strengths and weaknesses, that ethnic groups have differences and we aren’t all a homogeneous mass of robots. As an American of Cuban Spanish descent, I don’t mind jokes about eating lots of rice and beans or about Scarface or people joking that I must be a good dancer, because our people do eat loads of rice and beans and Tony Montana is a badass and I’m a pretty good dancer.

    But seriously, stereotypes exist for a reason and not all are bad. There’s a reason why people think the Irish are drinkers but musical, that Italians can cook, the French are sexy or that Germans are efficient. I can watch someone like Jeff Foxworthy joke about being a redneck or older stuff like Freddie Prinze joking about being half Hungarian and Puerto Rican and laugh, they were poking gentle fun at their own people in a good natured way. Too many people don’t realize that people are different and it’s not a bad thing to see that

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    1. Please, god, make this happen.

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      1. The partisan lean of the state makes it unlikely, but if any Republican can lose this election, it’s Vivek. He’s the most detestable person I’ve ever seen run for office in Ohio.

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  3. OT.

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  4. Kids are Geiger counters.

    Either she’s picking up and reacting to something you’re putting out or have put out there that you’re unaware of or she’s reacting to something else from school or church on in the neighborhood. I obviously can’t tell her tone from your post.

    How did you redirect back to your story after she said that?

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