For 74 1/2 years, I’ve been accumulating impressions, stereotypes, prejudices and images in my mind, whether I know or like it or not. I’m a white woman who grew up in Oklahoma with a certain amount of privilege, education, and experience which I have taken into the world as I’ve traveled, worked and lived. In 2020, I’m trying to analyze what my feelings are, where they came from and who I’ve influenced along the way.

We were taught that first impressions mean a lot. That’s where I’ll begin to check on myself. I’m figuring out what I see when I “size ’em up” as I meet people in so many situations.

When we see someone, whether walking down the street or being introduced to them, we are flooded with so many things to take in. As a woman, I think I check a person’s sex first. This is probably defensive. If it’s a man, how big or strong does he look, how old is he, how is he dressed, what is the expression on his face? It’s hard to break it down because we see so much in an instant. I’ve been experimenting with this for the last few days. There’s so much to assess. I’m trying to see how prejudiced I am.

Of course, I see skin color, race. It would be crazy to think any of us don’t notice something that is so identifying. What I’ve found is that I have so many prejudices and assumptions about people that it’s hard to decide what I see first.

The song, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” from the musical South Pacific, reminds us:

You’ve got to be taught
Before it’s too late
Before you are six
Or seven
Or eight
To hate all the people
Your relatives hate
You’ve got to
Be carefully taught

Maybe our parents didn’t specifically teach us, maybe we just observed the way they treated people. The people of color in my life as a child mostly worked for us, but I only respected and loved them. I would have been in trouble if I didn’t mind them. The funny things I remember were hearing that my grandfather said to never trust a red-headed bookkeeper and having my grandmother tell me not to let communist professors influence me in college. Those are amusing, to say the least. Who knows where those ideas came from.

The main thing I am learning is that my parents didn’t dehumanize anyone to us. We traveled to other countries and met people of other cultures and races and learned from them. They passed down to me that people are interesting and you can learn so much meeting others.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s and watched the world change. I’m stunned now to have friends who grew up in other circumstances in the same city and were subjected to prejudices and abuse of all kinds because they were Jewish, Native American, Black, or crippled. One friend told me she was bullied because she had lived in South America and spoke fluent Spanish. She was called names and was so traumatized that she quit using her Spanish. She is quite white, by the way. And, my friends who have been treated differently because they are female is a whole other discussion. I’m in that group myself but I digress.

Being white in Oklahoma is almost an anomaly. At one time, I worked for the American Red Cross, where I took a lot of diversity training. The Red Cross has a large number of volunteers who work with staff to assist people in disasters and they emphasize that you cannot discriminate when people are in crisis after a fire or tornado or other tragedy. We spent a lot of time learning how to approach people from other cultures. I did a lot of the programs in rural areas and schools for all ages. We were supposed to report the demographics of who we spoke to after each program. My reaction was that I couldn’t even tell the boys from the girls when I was speaking to the classes. Especially in Oklahoma’s rural areas, there are so many children from mixed families – Native American/Hispanic, Black/Hispanic, White/Black, etc. So many combinations. It’s amazing that we are considered to be such a “Red” state since we are a true melting pot.

I’m finding that I have fewer prejudices towards the melting pot I find myself in than I do to the actual people I should feel most comfortable with. I’m back to the things I notice and the prejudices I have. I’m old enough to take my initial impressions with a grain of salt. Tattoos are a great example of something that used to signal one thing to me and now are just another feature of someone to learn more about. Fluorescent hair and messy clothing (which may actually be very expensive) are things that aren’t what they seem. Not all blondes are dumb and not all teen agers are on drugs and so on. We have so many assumptions we make at first glance. Today’s political strife is not making it easier. We judge people quickly by stances they take online and it’s a strange world we are in where we are making judgments on people we have known forever.

In the late 60s or early 70s, t-shirts became a fashion statement. I’m old enough to remember making the stupid statement that I wasn’t going to wear men’s underwear. Now my wardrobe has an inordinate number of t-shirts covered in logos from places I’ve traveled, groups I belong to, or statements I want to make. Here I am after the first Women’s March of the current times on January 21, 2017. IMG_0763Sorry for the mirror image, but you get the drift and you would correctly assume from this that I was marching for women’s rights, the climate, and civil rights – all causes I’ve been working for most of my life. I wasn’t a marcher most of my years, but I’ve worked to better my community for all who live here in these areas and others.

This week, I saw a woman wearing this t-shirt. IMG_4761I immediately made assumptions about her, based on my own prejudices. I saw someone who was proudly proclaiming that she was a Republican and would only vote Republican and there is no point trying to talk to her about anything. She is right (and probably never wrong) and proud of it. I watched her play with her child and thought how much that t-shirt had changed how I was reacting to her. All my own prejudices were on my nerve endings, an emotional and visceral reaction, which is pretty amazing since I spent most of my voting life as a Republican.

It would be wonderful to think that my years of experience have taught me something, taught me to not put people in little boxes of my own assumptions, but I’m not even close to that level of perfection, no matter how hard I try. The only thing I can conclude from my study of myself is that I don’t think I dehumanize people, whether I like them or not. They are all still human beings to me and I know they have challenges in their lives that I can’t see at first glance or qualities that I should spend time discovering. I know I need to listen to more people and learn from other’s experiences. Working on being sympathetic, empathetic, and understanding are at the top of my list of things I want to improve in myself. I try to practice the Golden Rule in all things that I do.

And, yet, when I see or meet people and “size ’em up,” there are my lifetime of assumptions oozing out of my brain. In these troubling and confusing times, it’s a good idea to step aside and look in the mirror. We can all do better – and should.