I am a racist.

I am a racist.

And I'm not very happy about that.

A few weeks ago I visited the MySpace page of a woman I met online. On her page, there is a picture of her with her boyfriend. She's white, and he's black. And the first thing that came to my mind was: what is she doing with that black man?

Ouch! It hurt to have that thought.

In the town where I grew up, there were no black people. All I knew about black people was what I heard from others. My dad, as I recall, nearly always called black people “niggers.” I saw as a child the news on TV about the riots in Harlem, Watts, and Detroit, and I'd hear people around me say, “Well, what do you expect from niggers?” And they might toss in a comment or two about how they were all on welfare, too. That's what I learned about black people as a child.

As an adult, I lived in North Carolina for 8 years. Unlike the rural Pacific Northwest town I grew up in, there are black people in North Carolina! And I got to know some of them. Griffith was a technician where I worked, and a good technician. He was quiet and soft-spoken, and I don't think I ever heard him speak a harsh word to anybody. Sometimes a bunch of us would go to lunch together, and I doubt it ever occurred to anybody to exclude Griffith. He wasn't a nigger to any of us, I don't think anybody even thought of him as a black man. He was just one of the guys.

Then there was Wheatley. Wheatley was bright, witty, pleasant to everyone, and beautiful. And married, which broke my heart! I don't think I ever thought of Wheatley as a black woman; I just thought of her as a woman, and a damn fine woman at that!

Back in the town I grew up in, there are now a few black people, and I know several of them. I've had two of them work for me in my electronics business. And I never really thought of them as black people, just people. One of them is married to a white woman, and I have never looked at the two of them and thought, “What is she doing with that black guy?” They're just another married couple.

So why the reaction to the picture of this white woman with a black man?

I think that what I am guilty of is not so much racism as it is prejudice. Prejudice means, literally, “pre-judge.” I looked at the picture of a white woman and a black man, and I pre-judged him. I know nothing about him, yet I made the judgement that he was not the right man for this woman.

It's a lot harder to do that face to face. When I see a person in front of me, I find it much easier to just see a person. I don't generally see a black person, or a white person, or a brown or red person, I just see a person. Maybe it's seeing their smile, or hearing their voice, or maybe it's feeling the presence of another human soul before me. But I am unable to pre-judge a person who is standing right in front of me. My heart feels what my eyes and brain have learned to not see.

I am not happy that I pre-judged that man in the picture. I'm not happy that things I learned as a child still come back to haunt me. That bothers me. But I am happy that I was bothered by it enough that I have been thinking about this ever since that day when I looked at that picture and pre-judged - wrongly pre-judged – a man I knew nothing about. I'm happy that I was bothered by it enough to talk to several friends of mine about it, and I'm thankful for their insights. I'm glad that I was able to see this prejudice, and to see the error of it.

Almost certainly, I harbor more prejudices that I am yet unaware of. I hope this experience will help me to see them too, and to deal with them. I hope that in the future I will not see skin color, or hair color, or whether a person is fat or skinny, or tall or short or old or young. I hope that instead I will simply see another human being, another person much like myself. And I hope that you have been inspired to look for any prejudices you may harbor, and to work through them.