[Lik3]

I have had obsessions about race and not liking whites or Latinos. No white person has ever done anything to me to warrant hating all white people and no Latino has either. A cruel private message from a Latino was the catalyst for why I "feel" the way that I do. I know it is an obsession, but it is hard to shake. I am black and I have wondered how others feel about me or about blacks in general. It is not hard to believe that people are racists. I am from the South after all. But I have had these thoughts for a while now and they are bothersome. I just think that there are racist individuals everywhere, but I have never experienced much racism where I am from. I feel that the thoughts are intrusive and it makes me feel rather pathetic. I am especially concerned with Latin America and their treatment of blacks. I am obsessed with Latin America, though I have never been there. I don't know any Latin Americans personally outside of the internet. But with what I read, it is as if some Latinos think they are better than blacks, period. I had an interest in wanting to go to Mexico or Brazil, but I no longer have that interest and now I just want to overcome these thoughts. I am so embarassed to talk about this to other people. What shall I do?

I have had thoughts about race since I was young. I used to be able to watch tv shows about race, but now I find it cringeworthy. Is it the disorder? It has also caused me to have a mistrust of white people in particular. I have often wondered why black people should even like white people. I still wonder however, what white people think of black people. In reality, I don't think about race and the issue doesn't bother me. But with OCD, it is a rather upsetting issue. I have been around bigots, who hate and disrespected people because of their race. I just wondered if black people are the most misunderstood, stereotyped, oppressed, and hated race or group of people in the world. I have these thoughts and my compulsions are about going to race forums against my better conscience, namely Stormfront.

I feel better now talking about it. I wish I could just stop. I would like to do that, but it is easier said than done.

[Rose76]

Maybe this will help you a little bit. I am white. I happen to believe that Afican-Americans have the most to be angry about in terms of the history of abuse that they endured. What you may not have heard about, especially living in the South, is that there was considerable discrimination against many white "ethnic" groups. My father told me that he was very grateful for the Black Civil Rights Movement. He explained that, in the place where he worked, he would never be promoted to the level of a supervisor because of his ethnicity and his religion. He said that applied to lots of his co-workers of a variety of white ethnic background. Only after blacks won the right to get hired and also, to get "promoted" in the company, did things change for the ethnic whites.

My father said that he and his co-workers "rode on the coat tails" of the Black Civil Rights Movement. Thanks to what Blacks achieved, he was eventually offered a chance to be a supervisor. (which he declined) When Jesse Jackson marched from Washington to Boston, my father went to stand for over an hour on Route One in New England to be able to try and shake Jesse's hand. And he got the chance to do that, and told me he said "Thank you. Because of your movement, I, MYSELF, have more rights than I would have had. That's what my father taught to me.

[Brighid]

Hi I'm white as well..... however; let me tell you a little story....or something that has happened to me while growing up and how I feel now.......

We lived in a very nice community growing up, it wasn't the highland of great wealth, but it wasn't totally suburbia either. My father, really did not like black people at all. He would say things about them as we grew up but I never really 'listened' to him because of this reason................ when my brothers and I were around 9, 13, and 17 a young black family moved into the house across the street from us. You can imagine how upset anyone would be had they not liked a black man. Well, needless to say my father was irate. We couldn't go outside by their house and play, we were not allowed to lok at them, or smile, or say hi nothing. They had two young children, one girl, one boy. Well, it started out the young girl (tiffany) and I would look at each other from our bedroom windows that faced each other and wave.... sometimes we would open the window when my dad wasn't home and we would just giggle. Normal silly stuff. to make a long story short................tiffany and i developed a really close relationship over the years in high-school because her dad didn't like whites. lol... so, my dad hating blacks, her dad hating whites became our common ground to work out the differences and bond. I am still her friend today.

As far as what I feel today....everyone, don't care who you are, has judgements of something and convictions for which they stand firm. I carry a strong conviction of humanity. Because of my father, I don't judge anyone based on color...i try not judge anyone for anything. It's hard not to judge, but sometimes suppressing that urge and trying to let people in that you are not comfortable with may help you see things differently....
I don't really have a point, per-say, but maybe try to not let the feelings of one person come in-between you making a great friend.

I hope you have a great day

[Rose76]

Hi, I did not have my facts straight. I started to think I dreamed my post above. I did not. Rev. Jesse Jackson did lead a 64-mile, 7-day march form Bridgeport CT ( my old home town) to Hartford, CT. He led 5000 supporters, and he did march down the old Route One, past the end of the street my father lived on, in Connecticut (in what was called a blue-collared suburb.) It was in Sept. of 1991. And my father did meet and talk to him. He did want to thank him.

I thought of this thread tonight, as I am watching all the news shows talking about Pres. Obama's masterful leadership of the recent capture of Osama Bin Ladin. I just love this man. I am so glad to have lived long enough to see an African-American elected president. I really doubted it would happen in my lifetime, and now I am proud that my country has achieved this.

Again, I am white, and really pale, at that. But my parents didn't graduate from High school, due to poverty in their families. I lived in a scary housing project in a bad part of my home town. Poor people of all colors came from other states to take advantage of high labor demand in Connecticut. We all lived in the same building. I was 5 years old. When my brother got hurt playing and had blood all over his face, I ran into the nearest apartment I could find where I knew a nice family lived. They were African-American. The Mom there took care of my brother, while I ran up to the 2nd floor to get my Mom. That kind of stuff happened where we lived. We all played together. When I got hurt bad in the winter, when my sled slammed into a paked car and the bumper ripped my forehead open, it was a black classmate of mine, who ran to the road and stopped a car to get an adult to help. We were off away from where we lived, sledding down this hill. Those are my memories of growing up.

When my father got to making a little better money, we did get to move out of the housing Project. It was much harder for blacks to get jobs that would pay them enough to get out of that awful place. We knew that we weren't better - just luckier.

I have personally witnessed racism, and was really shocked. That was because I did not see much of that as a child. Only as an adult. I worked in a very competitive environment where I learned 2 things. People of my skin color were the quickest to back stab me to beat me out of a job. I got a lot of support from Afican-Americans in every job I worked. I don't know why they are so good to me. Maybe they can tell what my values are. But, I have worked in very racially mixed environments, and I have been helped so much by Blacks who, I think, saw that I was naive, and they took me aside and clued me in to how things work in a really Big City where I moved to.

I'm sure glad that life taught me that I can't trust, or distrust, anyone based on their skin color.

I checked out "Stormfront." Yes, there are those kind of people. There always will be bigots, some very extreme, as you saw on that Web page. I was brought up to see those kind of people as enemies to people of my own ethnic heritage.

You might want to google info on the 1924 KKK rally that took place in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Klan was really vicious, but they had failed "to do the math." The rally didn't end quite as they had planned.

[Unfriendly]

I'm white and I have a super similar thing going on. For a while I was viewing everything from a racial perspective, and it was really messing with me. I lost friendships over them saying racist things and it would affect me REALLY SERIOUSLY for some reason. My best friend and housemate is of color and every time she calls me out on something racist (we are all of the analysis that all white people are racist and that includes me) I take it super seriously and shut down for like five hours developing a super in-depth analysis of why it was racist and how not to do that anymore.

I've spent enough time doing this that at this point in my life I really seriously mistrust white people and I'm not even of color so I don't experience racism. I've spent the last five months or so obsessing over racism and why everything from communism to the food guide pyramid is racist.

I think it's been a productive few months and I'm genuinely glad that now I'm so much more up on my race **** than I used to be, but I'm not sure what to make of the fact that it's an obsession that has run my life.

[moth]

Maybe to counter these thoughts you could look up whites who participated in countering the apartheid in the south or those who marched alongside blacks for equality.

An example that is mentioned a lot in documentaries and textbooks is two Jewish white brothers and a black man who were lynched after days of sitting wherever they wanted... all of them in the white section, all of them in the black section. Either way they did it they arose anger from the racists that had been in the south.

Believe me, racism DOES exist. However, it seems like your thoughts are obsessive. My aunt moved to North Carolina and she visited Charlotte, SC and some people expected her to get off the sidewalk when they walked by! It's disgusting. But remember that racism is idealized by a minority and that most white people are not racist.

[moth]

Also, look up What Would You Do? on youtube