Changing stereotypes comes slowly
Dorreen Yellow Bird Grand Forks Herald
Published Saturday, March 22, 2008
Dorreen Yellow Bird is a reporter and columnist. Her columns appear
Wednesdays and Saturdays on the opinion pages of the Herald.
We know that race will have an effect on the presidential campaign
perhaps a profound effect. Presidential candidate Barack Obama found
that out, too. And we know the media is having a field day with the
racist sermon clips of Obamas pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Does Obama hold deep-seated hatred of white people? Does he harbor
secret thoughts similar to those of Wright?
Here are my thoughts about the issues surrounding race, Wright and
the presidential campaign.
We have our own history of race relations in North Dakota, but we
havent had to deal with the racial complexities that bigger cities
have faced. In our state, the major races were and are whites and
American Indians. Thats changing, of course, as more people move into
our communities from other countries and bigger cities. This is
especially true of college and university towns such as Fargo and
Grand Forks.
One difference in experience with other races was brought home to me
recently when I had the chance to interview Kuot Yolo, a Sudanese
refugee and UND aerospace student. Yolo moved to the Red River Valley
some 10 years ago. Before that, he had spent his boyhood in the
middle of a devastating civil war in Sudan, a war that forced him to
move from place to place sometimes starving and always just ahead of
his enemies.
His story plumbed new depths of mans inhumanity and made the
prejudices in my own community seem insignificant.
This interview reminded me that those television clips about wars in
Africa and the Middle East are real and awful. It also recalled one
of my first realizations about race, which came about when my sisters
and brothers and I recognized that our mothers opinion of black
people was outdated and wrong.
My mother was stuck in a different generation, perhaps not unlike
Obama indicated Wright seems to be. My mother lived a fairly
sheltered life in North Dakota and on the reservation. She was a good
Catholic, and many of her beliefs were based on the churchs
teachings.
My epiphany about her racial beliefs came one day when a black man
was hired to fix a fence next door. My mother called us into the
house and told us to stay away from him; he might have a knife, she
said.
We went outside and continued to play, but my younger brother,
Cookie, was curious. He went over to where the man was working, stood
a little distance away and watched him work for awhile.
It didnt take long before we saw Cookie handing the man nails and
boards, and pretty soon, they were talking like old friends. In the
next few weeks, they became real friends.
My mother noticed the relationship and didnt say anything. She had
learned that the man was not like what she had been told about black
people. And we learned that our mother could be wrong, too.
As I mentioned, Wright also seems stuck in an earlier generation. But
I cant seem to square his sermons with his Christian beliefs. He is,
according to many reports, an intelligent man who has college and
graduate-school degrees and eight honorary doctorates. So, some
religious people thought he had something good and intelligent to
say, given that they bestowed those honors upon him.
So, why havent we heard something in his sermons about Christian
beliefs such as forgiveness, loving your neighbor, seeing God in
every person and so on? Were other parts of his sermons left out on
purpose?
We all put each other in categories and use our experiences to judge
people. As an American Indian woman, Im stereotyped: Shes an Indian,
educated, elder and a journalist, some who know me may think. Those
are good things. But when people see me who dont know me, some may
think, She must be an alcoholic because Indians are alcoholics. Not
true. Or they may think I live on welfare because Indians always have
their hands out. Again, not true; my parents and grandparents were
hard workers.
But we live with these assumptions until they are scraped away to
reveal the truth and even then, sometimes were more comfortable
believing in the stereotypes. That helps us feel better about
ourselves . . . for a while.
For Sen. Obama to become President Obama is going to be difficult, I
believe. But if and when that happens, his color will disappear in a
way, and hell be measured by the standards of the presidency. He will
have broken through that line around the powerful and elite.
And maybe hell change some of the stereotypes we hold about people of
color, gender and all those other tags we attach to each other.
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