I can analyze, but the process would be the same every time. I’d meet or come in contact with a black person and be introduced to them. I’d like them as a person and most likely like them immediately. However in the back of my head I didn’t trust the person and thought they had their eye on something of mine. I am always friendly to people I meet, no matter how I feel about them, and I never hold a grudge unless it’s founded. I’m sure that any black that has met or come in contact with me has had nothing but good things to say about me, because my prejudice was very hidden and not apparent at all.I guess the only emotional defense I used when conversing with or interacting with blacks was just to withdraw. I never went out of my way to avoid them, but never went out of my way to converse with them. Control or placating are defenses that I rarely used around them, because in Zimbabwe for example, I had to stand my own ground and appear dominant, but without portraying racism or threats towards anyone. If I had completely withdrawn from the situations I found myself it, I would have been robbed or hurt, because although they are very nice people, they are dirt poor and would love to get their hands on the American money I had to carry. From my point of view, the only thing that blocked me from re-evaluating my prejudice was just my lack of exposure to them. I knew they were good people, but my past experiences had prevented me from having the desire to prove it wrong. It was my own laziness or lack of desire that was the problem as I saw it. The black population had no idea of my prejudice, so there really isn’t any way of telling whether their approach to my problem was effective. Like I said, I never made my prejudice known to anyone, so no one besides me was ever affected my it. My reframe to the problem was to tackle it head-on. I went to a country that I knew was 99% black, knowing ...
