TEXT 3 "IGNORANT PEOPLE"

Source: Quora

I've been waiting to answer this question for a while. 

I am male, white, healthy, educated and from the UK.  I grew up in a 99% white village in Wales, where, aside from a family of indians who lived in the village and who suffered racial attacks, I never met anyone who wasn't white until I was 18 and off to university.  At university, I made friends of all colours and nationalities.

British children's TV actually did a great job of educating me to racial issues and sensitivities and even before meeting a black person or a chinese person, I had no prejudices towards anyone (at least to the extent one can say this).  I actually found (and continue to find) racism very hard to understand and assumed it was the trait of ignorant people (which it is).  

Then, after leaving university, I moved to a small village in France to learn French for a month.  There were no other anglophones in the town... just the French people from that village.

It seems like everyone had formed an impression about me before I even finished my first sentence.  It was not a good impression.  I heard the same stereotypical jokes and digs.  But it wasn't always joking, many times it was said with contempt.  I would often be ignored at a dinner, or spoken over, and although this was over 10 years ago, I remember the feeling of unfairness and helplessness.  

Being British in France might be the nearest a white person can come to racism.  (Not trying to offend anyone who disagrees... just a figure of speech).  

Not that I want to over-dramatize.  I didn't receive physical violence or feel like my life was in danger.  In fact, the truth is, this experience has been extremely valuable for me personally.  From that point on I related to racism in a very different way - I related from experience.

It’s hard to say what racism feels like until you have felt it.  And I am optimistic because I really think that if comes down to education.  And yes, even children's TV shows can make a big difference.

[Just to add: I have many close French friends and the point of writing this was not in fact an attack on that little French town which was actually very beautiful...]

THE ANALYSIS

The last text analysed in this report is a public post (reproduced with permission), which was found in an American website called Quora. It was written on June 21st, 2015 by David Bailey, an Early-Stage Investor. This Website contains texts about analysis on political business, culture, technology, national and international issues and about life in general. It is publicity accessible for everyone interested in racism.

This text is accurate to see how racism affects people, particularly a white man who has grown up around white British people. He had never had contact with any coloured person until he went to University, but he was raised and educated in a way that he respected everyone despite their skin colour or race.

Along the story, the man uses a lot of adjectives in order for us to be aware of how he feels regarding his experience, and that is how he expresses his identity. He is a victim of racism in one point of his life that means he is the perfect example to be analysed.

The writer and teller organizes his words and choses different expressions to get the reader’s attention. To do so, some of his expressions are differently categorized in very particular categories. One of them belongs to “category bound activity” which gives the information that the man has been concerned for a while because he could not achieve what he wanted. It can be seen from the very beginning when he says “I’ve been waiting to answer this question for a while”.

Another category found in the text is related to people who do not care about the others when they are not so aware of what are they doing, for instance, when they do not respect people from another nationality. The narrator calls them “ignorant people” who have prejudices towards citizens from another culture as the main trait.

Another point that the narrator remarks is the fact that these “ignorant people” sometimes have racism behavior towards others “with contempt”. This action belongs to “category bound activity” which tells the reader that there is an intention to hurt behind the action. This way, the narrator feels more affected because there is a clear intention to hurt him.

However, the narrator points out a very optimistic way to deal with racism because he stands that with “education”, as a “category bound activity”, everybody would respect each other not giving importance to the skin colour or the culture. This point brings us to the idea of everyone having different values and knowledge in order to respect each other.

In conclusion, even if there are lots of confrontations due to racism, the man has a positive point of view on them. That is because he identifies himself as an “educated” person and it is reflected through the text because he seems understanding and respectful along he tells his experience.