How does anyone learn the odious lessons of racism? Who teaches it? It is learned and taught in our efforts to preserve cultural pride. As we depart from the idea of “America, The Melting Pot” to “American Diversity” we invite the subtle lessons of racism. It is not an “either/or situation.” It is “both/and.” We teach it and we learn it as we celebrate cultural diversity. How often do we hear the phrases, “I was taught by my parents…,” or “In my family, we…”? Racism is a by-product of cultural expression within our homes and communities.

I grew up in deep South Texas. In the early 1950’s segregation among Whites and Hispanics was still the social order of the day. However, the kids on the block, Anglo and Hispanic, played together in the streets. We were all equals in tag, baseball, and Red Rover. On the first day of First Grade, though, that social equality abruptly changed. My best buddy, Jose’, with whom I played, joked, laughed, and passed time daily had to attend the Mexican school on the other side of town, across the tracks, instead of the White school, down the block, with me. Until then, I hadn’t noticed that he was brown and I was pale, that he had dark hair and I was blonde. My first lesson in racism, was taught by parents, teachers, community leaders.

Years later, the Academy Award winning movie, Giant, punctuated this lesson in racism for me. In the movie, the rebel son of a weatlhy Texas rancher falls in love with a young Hispanic girl. This wealthy ranching family on a trip away from home stops at a roadside diner in West Texas. When the mixed-race couple and their child enter the restaurant all talk, all activity cease. It is poignant scene, true to life in the deep south of that time. This family could have been Black, Asian, Native American. The outcome would have been the same. They are ordered out of the restaurant. All the money and status of the wealthy rancher could not un-buy years of southern racism. In a hateful, triumphant show of power, the restaurant owner proudly points out his sign, his warning to people of color, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone!” People in the theater cheered. Fifty years later I remember this lesson vividly.

In the late ’50s my dad’s job with an oil company transferred him 150 miles deeper into South Texas, into an area that was populated predominantly by Hispanics. Mexico was closer to our home than we were to any US town. The culture was Mexican and my family were the minority. The lesson I was taught in First Grade would be retaught and I would relearn it many times over, here. I attended Junior and Senior High School as a Caucasian in a Hispanic school.

In the ’50s as other teenagers across america were meeting after school in malt shops and going to sock hops, pledging their affection for one another by holding hands and casting fertive glances when no one was looking, I learned that it was dangerous even to speak to a girl at school outside of class. I remember asking my parents why it was so wrong for Whites and Hispanics to like each other. Their response taught me another racist lesson. “You should never date anyone you can’t marry, and if God had intended for the races to mix he would not have made us different.” The Old Testament story of the Tower of Babyl, where the people are building a tower to the heavens, was used to illustrate this point. God stops them by tearing down the tower and “confounding their languages” so they can’t work cooperatively. I was taught that it is wrong to date interracially, and I learned that God, also, might be racist.

Religious tradition, based on the idea of cultural purity is taught in the Old Testament. As Moses led God’s chosen people, the Israelites, out of Egyptian slavery he also instructed them to kill “all” the inhabitants of the promised land to avoid religious, racial, and cultural contamination - to protect the purity of his chosen people. The “chosen people” concept, the idea of racial superiority, is not unique to Southern Whites. It is a universal cultural concept, foolishly and consistently nurtured world-wide. This is the core of the Jewish-Islamic conflict in the Holy Land today, still.

In pre-WW II Germany, a young politician, Adolf Hitler, manipulated this Biblical concept of cultural superiority, invoking racism as justification to murder six million Jewish Germans. The world observed in horror. Each extermination punctuated the lesson that the Arryian race was not only superior to Jewish, but it was right and desirable to eliminate people of difference to protect the German way, much as the Israelites were commanded by God to protect Jewish racial purity in the Promised Land by eradication all it’s inhabitants. Under Hitler, Germany had become the new Promised Land. All the lessons taught and learned in the Bible are not about God’s love, mercy, and compassion. Some are harsh lessons of a controlling, angry, jealous and preferential God. While some learn of God’s love, others learn of God’s bias. While some teach that God is inclusive, some teach he is preferential.

When the Civil Rights protests of the ’60s made news it was clear America was on a learning curve about the absurdity of ignorant Southern racist tradition. The Civl War had ended 100 years earlier, abolishing slavery, but in it’s aftermath the ugliness of racial inequality, prejudice and bigotry flourished. The lessons of “separate but equal,” “If God had intended us to mix we wouldn’t have different color,” and “They are not as intelligent as us” were finally being exposed for what they were, ignorant tradition, perpetuated by years of foolish consistency to cultural bias. Martin Luther King was regularly skewered in the media, and by the white community, in white homes, in white churches for the unrest he generated against this culture of racism. There were lessons to be learned and lessons were being taught.

Racism is alive and well in The Twenty-first Century. It is subtle, but we are still teaching and learning it through cultural pride activities, ethnic quotas, and political posturing. Racism is often a side-effect of well-intentioned cultural celebration. What one person views as diversity, another views as racial favoritism. America is struggling with its “Melting Pot” heritage. In the process of celebrating cultural diversity, we often encourage preference, separation, bias, bigotry, and racism.

Culture, religion, tradition all convey the seeds of racism from the past into the present, often unintentionally, often with intent. We value our traditions and our history for the richness they offer us in celebrating who we are culturally. It is a thin line, though, between valuing and celebrating who we are and devaluing and minimizing others who are different. Historical cultural values give rise to lessons of bias, prejudice and racism through direct instruction as well as implication. As Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” We often fail to realize the foolishness of our cultural consistencies until they are exposed as racism.