Familiarity and Racism

Gonna give the hypocrisy trail a rest today. There's plenty of that to address later.

A little family history today. When I was a kid I had my liberal parents and my conservative maternal grandparents. That was most of the family with whom I had contact on a regular basis, especially up 'til the time I was 10 and we moved from suburban Philly to central PA, a good hour plus away from the grandparents.

Moving to central PA, where racism was casual and common, I quickly figured out that much of it stemmed from the fact that these overwhelmingly German, Protestant descendants knew almost no one who wasn't just like them. It was a casual racism that wasn't any more virulent than their disdain for me as an outsider to the area. They were suspicious of that which they didn't know. It's not my mindset, but it's not an unreasonable one, if not taken to an extreme.

I always figured my grandfather's racism was of the same sort. He didn't seem to know anyone who wasn't white. Of course, he was also anti-Catholic even though his next door neighbor was Catholic, and they were friends. So, I'll start right off by saying that the logic of racism or sectarianism is an oxymoronic phrase. I should probably stop trying to figure it out. But, either in my grandfather's declining years when he was deep into dimentia or shortly after he died I was looking through yearbooks from when he was in public school back in the '30s. Damned if he didn't go to integrated schools in Philly. There was some indication in the yearbooks that he was even friendly with some of the black kids.

Which is odd to me. If you know people outside your ethnicity, and are apparently friendly with them, why paint with the broad brush of racism? You can dislike an individual without disliking everyone who shares some superficial commonality with that person. Is it really that hard to categorize by individual rather than broad categories?

Gotta love humans, especially when they're in your own family. One big bundle of contradictions.