Racial slurs

are not acceptable. They must not be tolerated. 

I have a very good and obviously indigenous male friend. I have known him almost all my life. If we see one another we will normally hug.  The only thing that has ever stopped us is Covid19. 

We met unexpectedly in the city one day and he gave me his usual bear hug. I returned it.  A complete stranger objected to all this in a very racist manner. M.... and I looked at one another - and then hugged each other again. 

We have had a few looks of surprise, dismay, disgust, and more over the years. M... tries to shrug it off. He's been living with this all his life. It still hurts though. People do treat him differently because of the colour of his skin. It doesn't matter that, in his employment, he rose through the ranks of the social welfare system to the point where he had many staff under him. It doesn't matter that he is still consulted even though he officially retired several years ago. There are still people who think he is incapable, that he only got to where he did "because he's aboriginal". They believe he didn't earn his way up the ladder through sheer hard work, extra hours and much more.

I miss his mother, R....  R... was like a second mother to me. I wept when she died. I wept my way through her funeral and barely managed to say the piece I was asked to write. I loved R... I love M... and his sister. They have been and still are the best of friends.

M... and I  have discussed the issue of racial slurs. He is of the view that society needs to look a little further at name calling, that it is not just racial slurs that need to be addressed. He is of the view (and yes, I asked him whether it was okay to say this) that the attention being given to the issue of racism now is making the problem worse, not better. 

"We aren't entitled to any more or any less than anyone else," he will tell you, "But there are now people who believe they are entitled to special treatment because they see themselves as different."

M.... worked for years with teenage boys in trouble. Most of them were indigenous and, as he put it the difficulty was, "Getting it through their thick heads that they are nothing special and they need to behave and work for it." Of course he came across racial prejudice in the police force but he was of the opinion that, if you were behaving yourself, you were not generally going to attract attention.

"You are entitled to special treatment only if you cannot do something for yourself or so that you can do something for yourself," his mother R... used to say.  (I was as much the recipient of that as her own two children. She once threaded a needle for me - but she made me sew the button on myself because I could do that.) 

R... made sure we understood we needed to treat ourselves with respect in order to be treated with respect by others. That in itself won't stop racial slurs or insults about disabilities but it can provide a sense of self worth that helps us deal with it.