Racism — Bigotry

While I feel totally unqualified to address the situation of black people in America I do feel I have some experience with bigotry. In the late 70s I work at a place called LeFebure. I was a welder there. In my department there were many races and bigots. In those days I spent a lot of time outdoors fishing and such. I tanned up pretty well and had fairly dark skin due to my time outdoors. Because of this I experienced strange reactions especially for one particular coworker.

That particular coworker was named Dennis. He was always commenting on my nationality, guessing at it due to my looks. He told me I looked many different nationalities over the course of the years I worked with him. To him I ranged from Syrian, Arab, Jewish, Iraqi and other such nationalities. All 4 of my grandparents came from Europe. 2 from Ireland, one from Scotland and my dad’s mother was born in France. I looked exactly like her father. So I looked very French and as a consequence slightly Mediterranean.

This was enough for Dennis. He was an unbelievable bigot and racist. He not only told me I look like different nationalities but he told other people. People I didn’t even know would come up to me and ask was I Jewish? Was I Syrian? That is at a strange fascination with my nationality. I’m pretty sure I was treated with some bigotry due to that. I would just attributed to Dennis except that many years later when I worked as an engineer I ran into another nationality issue.

This particular case I had spent many many days fishing on the Mississippi and had the darkest tan I ever had. I worked with a man named Bruce. One day Bruce came to me and said another engineer named Tim asked him if I was Mexican. Tim always acted strange to me and I always felt this Had something to do it. I found that these bigots do not want to change and are just looking for someone else to be the center of negative attention.

While this does not qualify me to understand black relations in America I think it does entitle me to understand a little bit of bigotry. I’ve not sure why it mattered to the people at LeFebure if I was Jewish or Syrian or whatever but it did seem to matter to them. I pretty much just ignored them. I can’t say I was innocent of racism back then but my treatment at the hands of others and their strange views taught me something.