What is racism?

I barely notice student skin color.  It simply doesn't matter to me, not like their behavior, attitude, presentation of themselves, and literacy levels do.  Needless to say, I was a little startled when, in my first semester teaching after completing my master's degree, I was accused of being racist when one of my students who turned in a paper that didn't quite make the page count minimum--with the text all in bold--and got a D. 

I leaned forward, folded my hands on my desk and thought as fast as I could.  Then, I asked him, "Who's the racist?  The teacher that holds you to the same standards as everyone else, or the teacher that has different standards just for you, standards that are maybe just a little bit easier?"

That shut him up for a little while.  And then he made the startling realization that all of his teachers in elementary and high school were racist. 

Standards that are different according to race constitute one form of racism.

A couple of years later, I started tutoring the football players.  One of the guys was literally one of the biggest men I'd ever met.  Probably about six foot ten, and nearly as broadly muscled as he was tall.  Had gorgeous, beautifully maintained dreads tied back out of his face, and skin the same color as my favorite Colombian Supremo coffee without cream.  Very handsome--but he had an awful attitude, and almost the whole time I sat across a table from him, he tried to intimidate me. 

Needless to say, that didn't work.  And he got confused.  He asked me why I wasn't scared of him, so I told him to look under the table. 

At that time, I had to use a cane through the winter.  My knee started hurting in about September or October, and got really iffy in how well it worked--thus, the cane.  And my favorite was a solid bar of hickory, with a knob on the end for a grip. 

The knob end of that cane was resting between his feet on the floor under the table.  I wasn't afraid of him partially because I just wasn't, and partially because I was prepared to put him in a world of pain if he actually did more than just act like an ass. 

He said I was the first white woman he'd ever met that wasn't afraid of him on some level.  I told him it was more than likely less his skin color and more his attitude.  Told him I thought he was quite the bit of eye candy, and to ignore idiots that couldn't see him for who he was.

And that kid's attitude did a complete one-eighty.  The coaches even asked me what I did to work such a change in that kid (no, I didn't admit to threatening blunt-force emasculation). 

Being afraid of someone because he's big and black is the same old form of racism that the activists whine about.  It's a lot rarer than it used to be, but it still happens among the ignorant.

A couple weeks after that, I was on the elevator with a couple of football players, both of whom had been in my composition classes.  The three of us were joking around, and one of the two said something--I forget what, now, but I remember that it had nothing to do with race--and the other half-jokingly called him racist (and yes, the other student was black).  I pointed out that racism was also bringing up race when it had no application to the subject under discussion. 

So, if I disagree with pretty much every one of the President's policies, and am called a racist because I disagree with him at all...who's the racist?  I guaran-damn-tee you it isn't me.