Jay Grabow
Omaha, NE
I’m a white, middle-aged, male that used to believe the racist stereotypes that I was taught growing up. Two events changed my thinking about race. One was a vicious fight I witnessed when a white teen bullied black teen over the fact that he was black. When the black teen fought back, he was badly beaten by the larger, older white kid. The other even occurred when I was about 25, working at a hardware store. The UPS driver that delivered goods to our store each day was a dependable, likable, hard working African American. My manager was a white racist who was nice to the driver – to his face anyway – but often told jokes about blacks after the delivery. At some point, we needed to hire a delivery driver, and the black UPS driver applied for the job. When I asked the manager if he would hire the UPS driver (who was clearly the most qualified candidate), he exclaimed, “I’ll never hire a damn ______!” That event revealed to me that African Americans face a different set of obstacles to their lives than I faced. Ever since, I’ve fought to resist my racist upbringing and tried to practice empathy. But I know that there are so many things I’ll never understand about what it’s like to be discriminated against.
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