There were several occasions when my church youth group (primarily girls with women leaders) would go on camping activities during the summer while school was out, including visiting a few of the national parks and monuments down in Southern Utah. I don't remember exactly which place I was at when this happened, but those details don't matter concerning the point of this story. We were returning from a hike, and I noticed while on the way to the car a couple holding hands. The man was white and the woman was black. Seeing that stirred up some feelings of shock that weren't appropriate. It alarmed me that I was feeling this way, because I never thought of myself having those kind of feelings. So I got in the car and started questioning myself. Why was I feeling like that? I sat back and examined myself and what possible reasons would influence me. The only thing I could think of was that it never crossed my mind that interracial relationships of that kind existed between the two. I'd never seen it before; But then, how was that such a problem for me when it was no problem for me to witness people marrying Asians, Latin Americans/Mexicans, and so on? The numbers didn't add up, so I concluded I needed a correction. It wasn't easy at first to accept it, but it changed, and that was a good thing, because as time passed on, I became familiar with more people who ended up in these similar relationships, and it's no longer an issue for me.
For those who want to improve themselves on this, I want to bring out some key points from my story that helped me get over this:
- Recognition: Recognizing immediately that something wasn't right.
- Self-Examination: Looking into myself to find out what the problem was.
- Acknowledging the Problem: Accepting rather than dismissing the issue.
- Resolution: Making a course correction
- A new mindset: Resolving to never return to the same error
I don't know if that helps or even makes sense to anyone, but there it is.
A second example involves someone else. I made good friends with my English professor during my first year of school. She was the sweetest, most soft-spoken person. I would go to see her in her office, and she would always invite me in to not only talk to me about class, but about other fun things. She even got into an argument with my German teacher concerning who found me their most favorite student. That was quite entertaining. She was born and raised (I thought) in Florida, but grew up in the Southern culture. That was easy enough to recognize. She often complimented the boys who would open the doors for her by calling them a "true Southern Gentleman" as she passed through. Seriously, she was the sweetest.
I ended up taking a second class from her for my second year, and this was enlightening to me, as I began to see a different side to her. We had a black girl from the South there, I believe her name was LaTisha. She wasn't afraid to speak in class during class discussions. I could see and feel the turmoil within my professor that she was really struggling. There were several times when she arranged us into groups to discuss reading sections, and I remember one particular group I was involved in had LaTisha as a member. We were assigned to look up the poet. LaTisha was selected to bring some resources to us to look him up, and she brought them back to our group, but they had little to no information on him. Not knowing what resources to go to, our presentation was a bit lackluster. A short time after that, I was visiting the professor in her office, and she was grading the presentations. She came across LaTisha while I was there and said something about her that indicated that she thought LaTisha was being lazy. I had to speak up for her, because I knew that if I had that assignment, I probably wouldn't have done much better. Whatever I said caused the professor to bump the grade up a little, though I was certain she was still struggling with those feelings.
There was a time about a month into the semester that my professor ended up suffering a debilitating heart attack. I remember us sitting in class that day and trying to decide what to do, because we were supposed to present our poetry in front of the class. As a whole, we decided to go ahead with our presentations, despite the fact that we had no professor. I went up there with my Valentine Limerick (see Valentine Limerick). The class thought it was hilarious, but LaTisha was most enthusiastic. I left that class having a great appreciation for LaTisha. She was enthusiastic and full of so much energy, it was difficult not to like her. I only wish my professor could have seen her that way, but when you grow up a certain way, it's extremely difficult to get out of that mindset. Despite this clear struggle she had with LaTisha, I was still able to see her past all of that, and we remained friends until we lost touch. She's passed away now, but I became friendly with her daughter, who was a neighbor of mine for a few years.
I wish so much that people knew how to look at people past their flaws. I could go further into this subject on matters of historical figures, but now's not the time for that. If people were just a little more patient and understanding with people being, well, for lack of a better term, human, this world would show a significant improvement.
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| Professor's response to an assignment to write the most terrible essay that existed: "A+++ Wonderful This is absolutely the best worst essay I've ever received. You were a joy to teach-- Keep in touch." *She laughed through the whole thing* |
