Blew Me Away

The Color of Disaster Assistance

Americans are more willing to provide extended government assistance to white victims of Hurricane Katrina than to African Americans and other minorities -- particularly blacks with darker skin... . Participants went to a Web site that featured a brief news article about the effect of the hurricane. A photo of an individual featured in the story accompanied the article.But here's the trick: The race, gender and occupation of the featured person varied.

When I ran across this column at the Washington Post, I was surprised, & just a little scared. The complete results can be read here.
I hadn't seen the story when it ran, & I think of myself as enlightened & non-bigoted, but here we see the subconcious at work, the things we've learned along the way that we may not even be aware of.
I want to think that had I read this article, & taken their brief survey at the end, that I would not have been affected by the portrayals that the writers used. But I'm not sure that I can say that with great confidence.
I grew up in the deep south, went to a high school where I think I remember 2 black students in my four years there, & certainly no Latinos. While my father never showed a racist tendency that I'm aware of, I know that my grandmother was of a certain class of the old South, that, while not overtly racist, certainly didn't want those people getting all uppity. All the people who worked in her gardens or in her house, she treated with respect, but I'm sure that she never expected them to ever be anything more than a menial labor source.

So... How much of that did I learn from her? How much of that was cancelled out by good role models that I had. And how much of it is neither here nor there thanks to the almost complete lack of diversity in my life up until my twenties?
I hope that the compassion I've learned over the years outweighs all of that, & that my instinct will always be to do what is right, not what is expeditious.