Is it racism...or something else?

An indigenous footballer - now retired - is in today's paper claiming that he was asked to leave a swimming pool. The reason? A white grandfather told a guard the footballer was making his young granddaughter "feel uncomfortable".

Now if this happened because of the colour of someone's skin that is totally, utterly and completely unacceptable. The question we need to ask however is whether it actually happened. If it did not happen then what was making a young girl feel uncomfortable?

Children are not nearly so racially conscious as the adults around them. I was never aware of any racial slurs among young children when I was teaching. Arguments were fought over toys and whose turn it was, not the colour of someone's skin. 

I did have a group of children come to me one play period because a man was looking over the school fence. Yes, his skin was suggestive of a mixed racial heritage. The complaint they made however was about something entirely different, something sexual in nature.  The head of that particular school was good. He had already been informed. He had immediately called the police. Fortunately a nearby patrol car was quickly on the scene and the man was removed. 

When I talked to my class before the afternoon started not one of them mentioned the colour of his skin. It was his behaviour that mattered.

I in no way wish to suggest that the indigenous footballer was doing anything wrong. The most likely possibility is that he was unintentionally invading the personal space of another person or that he spoke to them - perhaps in a way which seemed a little too friendly.  

Nevertheless the incident is viewed as a racial one, as yet another incident of "racial discrimination". I have no doubt the footballer genuinely believes it to be that. He has been conditioned and encouraged to believe it.

My friend M..., whose skin is the colour of good dark chocolate, is well aware of "racial discrimination". There have been instances in his life, of course there have. At the same time he says he has really suffered very few instances of discrimination. I think I know why. He is always well groomed and also immaculately dressed when out. He is a man who opens doors, gives up his seat on public transport, walks on the outside of the footpath and much more. It is quite natural. It is what his parents expected of him. It is what he expected of his own children and now his grandchildren.

Years ago M... applied for a promotion - and did not get it. He could have seen it as "racial discrimination" but I remember sitting in the kitchen of his mother's house when he was telling her about it. R...'s response to his disappointment was, "Maybe they just feel you don't have enough experience yet. Don't let it change your ambitions. Apply for the next one and the next one..."

Some time later the head of his unit called him in and told him there was another position coming up, "And we would like you to apply for it." He did and obtained the position which led him up the ladder to the very senior position he had when he retired. Would that have happened if he had made complaints about "racial discrimination" when he did not get the first position he applied for?

I do not want to suggest that racial issues are not an issue. They most certainly can be. I do wonder though whether they are sometimes seen as an issue when something else is actually the reason for an act of apparent discrimination.