Straight talk about race

I don't consider myself a racist. I recognize in myself that I had some prejudice when I was young and I've been doing my best to purge myself of it ever since. And, admittedly, the people I've known have been by far mostly of European descent, with a good number of Asians in the mix. I've known a few black people, but not many. Most of those have been normal, everyday folks and I very quickly stop noticing that the color of their skin differs from my own.

There was one exception, though. During the early '90's, I took a year off from college to work in the product support department of the company I currently work for. It was a "cooperative education" program which some college would give credit for. Mine didn't, but the experience was still worth it. One of my coworkers was also in the coop program, and from the same school although I hadn't met him before. He was a young black man who I'll refer to as "C." C was smart, friendly, funny, and seemed like an all-around good guy. However, I eventually discovered something that he was doing that I could not, in good conscience, approve of as it was against the law.

There was a chain of retail software stores in this area that has since gone out of business (they sort of still exist in an online-only form). At the time, they had a very liberal software return policy. They would take back any software that you had purchased there, even if you had opened the package, in return for store credit. What C would do is buy software, copy the diskettes (CD-ROM drives were a luxury item at that time and nobody had burners anyway), photocopy the documentation, and then return the software for store credit. He would then use that credit to purchase another title and repeat the process.

In addition to that, he simply wasn't a very conscientious support technician, often taking the lazy way out when it came to solving callers' problems. The coop program was for nine months. Some of us had it extended to 12 months. Others, like myself, were invited to stay for an additional three months as temp workers. It came as no surprise to me that C was not invited to stay longer.

All I could think at the time was, "Way to perpetuate the stereotype, dude."

Here was a smart, capable guy who had a chance to rise above the common stereotype held about people with his skin color and he blew it. Instead, he engaged in theft and was lazy on the job.

In the end, though, it didn't matter that he was black. He was responsible for the choices he made and the consequences of those choices. His skin color didn't make him do what he did. It was the content of his character that made the difference and that's what he was ultimately judged on. Exactly as it should be.

The inspiration for this was a couple of posts I've read in the past couple of days. The first is by the ever-irascible Kim du Toit where he talks about why prices at stores in minority neighborhoods tend to be higher. The reason is increased levels of theft. The second is by Mike at Cold Fury where he comments on Kim's post and expands it out with experiences of his own.