As Long as I'm Avenue Qing: Are You a Little Bit Racist?

[Exian]

About a year ago, I had an experience that made me rethink my honesty with my racism. I like to believe I'm not an outward racist who hates a certain type of people based on sweeping, superficial, generalizations, and even after the experience, I still like to think that. But, my racism was put to question when the chips were down. Here's probably a long story:

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It happened about a year ago at work. I worked at a produce wharehouse on 3rd shift (nights, whatever you call it); part of my job was to back up the big box-trucks into the docks to be loaded. This meant walking through a huge poorly lit parking lot, looking for the truck number that was needed. I was never particularly scared doing this, because I worked in the same area I lived, which is pretty damn country. The sticks, you might call it. In fact, behind the parking lot and the surrounding area is a huge corn field.

One night, I pull a loaded truck out, park it, go looking for the next one, and hop in. I swing the truck around and get it lined up with the dock, and as I'm checking the mirrors to back up, I suddenly see a guy out of the driver side window. I'm only mildly startled to see a man in the parking lot, as it was common for delivery guys to get there early. Protocol was to tell these guys, when they came to the building, to go back to their trucks and wait until morning. We don't do deliveries at night. The other common thing here, and getting to the point; the delivery guys were always middle-eastern.

So, I suddenly see the guy approaching my window. He has a hood on and its night, but I know he's middle-eastern. I'm mildly startled. Then, I see his right hand is slack to his side, and it's holding a long skinny metal object. It's the size of a handgun and its being held in the crook of his thumb and pointer finger; ie held like a gun. So I start to panic, but not outwardly because I don't want the guy to think I'm rude. Well, I say not outwardly, but my hands were instinctively shifting everything from reverse into drive and popping air brakes. If he pointed that thing at me, I was about to steal the company truck and let my coworkers deal with it (I'd probably call the cops once I was safe; I'm not an animal). While my hands are readying to take me to safety, my eyes are frantically jumping from the "gun" to the man's face back to the "gun". In retrospect, I guess I was looking for signs of agressive intent. He motions for me to stop and keeps approaching. He says some stuff that I couldn't hear over my heartbeat and I "act" like I didn't hear him, mouthing "wha?" I really couldn't form a single thought other than fright. Here I was in a real situation that you only see in movies or read in the papers and my response is to panic.

Eventually (one sencond, maybe two), he moves the object to his other hand and I see its a flashlight, but not before he looked down at it and realized what it looked like. I think my attempt to not be rude failed. I roll down the window and he asks about deliveries. I tried to calmly explain the protocol, but I was having trouble modulating the volume of my voice and ended up shouting it at him. He thanked me and went away. I slammed the truck into the building, because I was having trouble controlling the muscles in my lower leg.

When I play it back in my head, I realize that I knew he was middle-eastern and hooded before I saw the "gun". I worry that those things played a part in my reaction. I try to change details in the story to see if I would react the same. Maybe if it was: a white guy, no hood, daytime, a girl, a black guy, and then I saw the "gun" would I have reacted differently?

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I don't know. What do you say? Was that racist?