Black History Month Means NOTHING to Jessie

So, this post will actually be about school today and not the weekend, like I had wanted it to be. I guess I should say it's more about people and their attitudes and why I am still constantly surprised by them.

First of all, today at school my friend Carolyn had a conversation with Jessie which, sadly, I was not present for. I need to preface this: I DO NOT LIKE Jessie. She is a narrow minded, hypochondriac who must meddle in everyone's business. I do not wish her any harm. I just wish she would leave me alone. I have actually told her to her face that I do not like her, and she laughs and calls it our "banter" and "what we do." Ok, there is no "we." She just does not get the fact that I can't stand her. She's like a stray cat that you fed once and now won't leave you alone.

Ok, so with that said, Carolyn and Jessie were sitting in the lunch room before class and some how the subject of the presidential election came up. And some how or another Jessie called Barack Obama the 'N' word. She actually used the word. I was speechless when Carolyn told me this.

I knew for a while now that Jessie is prejudice...she told me in so many words when discussing why she was so angry that her sister in law was marring a black man. I was just flabbergasted that she actually used that word.

There are reasons that at school I do not tell everyone that my boyfriend is transgendered. I do not want to risk what could happen if someone was to find out. Jessie told me that she has "no problem with gay people." (And I know I'm clumping gays and lesbians into the same group as transguys and girls...but I'm quite sure she doesn't even know what transgendered means...) But then when talking about David (who is THE [literally] gay guy at school) whom she says she "loves to death" she describes him by making a limp wrist motion. She takes unnecessary pot shots at many gay people's sexuality...even fictional ones.

I continued to express my shock at the fact that Jessie had called Barack Obama what she did when Amanda (another student) heard us. After we told her what had happened she responded that I shouldn't be so surprised. After all, we *do* live in Kentucky.

That got me thinking. While, yes, I live in Kentucky, I have been fortunate enough to 1) live in Louisville, a relatively liberal city (especially for the south), 2) have been brought up by parents who did not distill any type of prejudice in me and 3) live now in a bit of a bubble of my own making; of friends and other people who I know will not give me shit. And while I know that discrimination and hatred exist in the world going to school at Spencerian has opened my eyes to the harsh reality that they exist in my backyard.

I don't think in my life time I have ever dealt with a person who was openly hateful of another "type" of person. Granted, in high school I dealt with kids who would shout the word "fagot" at a friend of mine while throwing candy at him. But they, I thought at the time, were just kids being stupid. I now know that those "kids" have not grown up and that they might now have kids of their own who they are teaching these hateful views to.

What baffles me even more though, is to know Jessie's back story. In high school she was picked on relentlessly by the kids at school. Presumably (though she has not told me) due to her weight and her various medical problems. She knows what it is like to be treated like shit because she is different. But yet, she hates others for the very same reason.

The only thing I can think of is that these two things (her being treated poorly in high school and her own 'prejudice' of black people) do not form a connection in her brain. She feels that they have no common thread. Because, I'm sad to say, she does not view black people as either people who have feelings or who diserve to be treated equally.

I am thankful that I have been able to tell a handful of people at school about John. I pick and choose very carefully who those people are. Very few people know, but I am becoming more open about it. I talk about it freely in the lunch room with Carolyn and Amanda and Amy when she is there. I told a guy in one of my classes today who was totally cool with it (he said since he grew up in Bosnia he was just thankful to be alive and didn't have any desire to hate others since he saw so much hatred in his own country.).

Part of me wants to tell Jessie. 1, I know that she could not do anything physical to me, and anything verbal she could say to me I could come back at her much more eloquently. I was an English major after all. Besides, anything that she could say would mean nothing because her words are backed with hate and not knowledge. And 2, maybe it would get her to leave me the fuck alone.