This comment is from Johnny Walker Black on the post “Is this really news to anyone? Oh, not if you’re a black man.”
I had this same issue when I would come home from a deployment. I thought it was my hair cut, or maybe my silence that scared people. I found out it was my demeanor and my cold angry stare that scared them. It was the stigma that I was “crazy” because I just came home from a war zone. It started to bother me but my wife clued me in on something. If I focused on the good, had a positive attitude and stopped focusing on how I was being treated; my life would be better. She was 110% correct. You want to change racism? Seems silly but stop focusing on race on both sides. You get turned down for a job, cut off in traffic, or yelled at by a stranger stop looking at yourself as a victim and become an advocate. Whether race is why they did it or not. Be nice and nice things will happen and beside nothing pisses off a racist person more than a nice person. Some one calls you a name or treats you different? Thank them and go on with your life. You will impact their life in a great way doing so, and like I said really piss’em off.
—
photo: justinfeed / flickr