Unexpected Racism

One of the things I like about City of Heroes is that, in general, I find a better quality of player on the servers. I don't find a lot of gankers, or "Leet" snobs, or loot whores (this last mostly because there is little loot in the game). Every now and then over my nearly four years of playing I have run into someone who surprised me in a positive or negative way.

A few days ago, while playing my Peacebringer, Ace Atomic, I accepted an invitation to join a team. One of the two other members already on the team welcomed me and then asked me, "Why a PB (peacebringer) instead of a WS (warshade)?"

"Because I like to be a good guy," I responded.

"Have you read the history on WS? They are like bad guys who repent and try to do good."

"Exactly. I don't like that. I like being a good guy through and through," I said.

And then this person with whom I was having a perfectly ordinary, generally pleasant conversion, said the following (absolute direct quote-- I wrote this down word for word), "LOL. It's like the black ethnicity wanting to live in a nice house. Know what I mean? They didn't do what makes the sterio type [sic]."

Normally I am a fairly quick-witted guy who always has a comeback. I process most information fairly quickly. However, this comment flabbergasted me. I sat in front of my PC monitor in amazement.

A few things finally started flitting through my mind: How does he know I'm not a "Black Ethnicity"? Does he have any idea how that sounds? Where does he get off saying something like that? What the hell?

I said nothing and he dropped the topic and did not return to it. I helped them with that one mission, thanked them for the opportunity for the team, quit the team, and then used the Ignore command on that particular person so I wouldn't hear from him again.

I have at least one or two friends of each of the other races, and many friends of some races. These people are my friends for many reasons and due to many qualities, their skin color not being a driving factor to any of my decisions. My parents raised me to be open-minded and to judge people on their character and qualities, not their race, religion, or creed. And, like most human beings, I tend to think of others as having similar sentiments, thoughts, feelings. Having this sort of subtle racism suddenly brought to my attention has made me rethink how I see the world and how prevalent racism is in it.

My opinions on how far America has come in race relations has taken a hit and I am continuing to reevaluate my response to this surprising, and disappointing, occurrence.