Did you really just say that?

During a long and rather slow day at work this week I decided to catch up on some reading for class. Among other articles, I read Tatum's "The Development of White Identity" mostly because I was intrigued by the title. The article came from a different perspective than many I have read before, and it really got me thinking about my own life, the people I hang out with, and the daily interactions I have. Obviously, I do not consider myself racist and would say that I was raised in an environment where the main issue of race was that it should be a non-issue. As I sat there in the small confines of my job deep in thought about these issues, a customer approached interrupting my ruminations to order a double espresso. With the call back to reality and to actually do my work, thoughts of Tatum's article vanished from my consciousness and I continued with the tasks at hand.

Fast forward to a few hours later: I am off of work, attempting to relax, and meeting up with a some friends who were visiting in town and who I hadn't seen in a while. It was great to catch up, but as the night went on this friend continued to make one racist joke after another, leaving no ethnicity out. At first I just let it go, but after a while it simply became obnoxious. Here I was, just hours after reading an article that reflects on both overt and institutional racism and the way in which White people either perpetuate or try to stop it, and the reading had suddenly become my reality. I was shocked, as this friend of mine could have been one of those quoted in Tatum's reading. I did not really know what to do. Eventually, he could see that I was offended, and I even told him that his remarks were not disimilar to the racist remarks I was reading earlier in the day, but that did not seem to phase him. This was frustrating for me, and I guess is something I am still trying to work through and understand.