Internalized Racism

Being biracial (black and white) can be difficult. You know what is even more difficult? Having biracial siblings.

Most of my life has consisted of re-learning the lesson that no one else thinks like me. This includes members of my own immediate family, who grew up in relatively the same environment as I did.

At times, the ways in which this lesson is reiterated can be extreme.

A few weeks ago, one of my siblings visited me in Madison. It seemed as though every other thing that came out of his mouth was some joke about a racial stereotype or prejudice about people of color. Black people. Asians. Latinos. On and on and on.

None of them were racist, per se, and I never responded to any of them, but I didn't like it. They weren't amusing to me.

The kicker came on Sunday.

We were walking back from church. There was a group of 4 black male college students walking down one of the streets. Now Madison is a pretty white city, 85%, and the downtown area is particularly white so it is a pretty rare occurrence to see any people of color.

My brother of course pointed it out- "You never see black people by themselves. They're always together."

Okay, sure, whatever, I thought. But I'm pretty competitive and I like to prove people wrong, so on the next block when I saw one black male college student walking by himself on the other side of the street, I naturally had to point it out. This black male student just happened to be walking a few yards behind a single (as in there was one) white female student.

My brother glanced across the street and said, "He's probably gonna rape her."

I didn't even know what to do. I was in complete shock. I stopped dead in my tracks on the sidewalk and I looked at him, probably with my mouth hanging wide open.

In that moment, all I wanted to do was curse him out. He should have been grateful that he was my little brother and not my peer.

As a black person, I was offended.
As someone with a black father, I was offended.
As a freaking human being, I was offended.

How, as a black person, could he say something like that? That student is our cousin, our other brother, our father 20 years ago!

Negative and racist stereotypes about black men had been fed to my brother, who is a black man, and he just spits them right back out as jokes!?

What does it say about the society we live in when a person (a minority) can say something offensive that criminalizes themselves, their brother, their father, and half their family and not think anything of it?