She has obviously over-generalized your particular race, probably connecting some certain behavior or sub culture to your color exclusively. This is one way that seemingly nice people become cold and harsh towards other races. Same applies to religion, except we call that bigotry.
Since I just recently ( an hour ago) mentioned a few points on this topic in another forum, I thought I'd go ahead and share snippets of it with you...
My Post:
Honestly, have patience for these people, man. I used to be ever so slightly discriminitive with mild overtones of racism in my life. I have changed, but mainly because of my exposure to others not like myself and most importantly, Faith. I'm not throwing my personal beliefs on you, but I want to make one statement about racism that is 110% true:
Racism stems from a child being exposed to (by their parents) the intolerance and hatred of others. Key phrase, by their parents. Sure, there are other things that feed it such as media, bad group of friends, even some laws encourage animosity towards certain races, but all in all, its the parents (or lack thereof) that cause ill-will and intolerance towards those different or seemingly inferior to us.
I say all this because I want you to understand that grace is paramount here as you handle this situation. She is likely a product of her own environment - an environment that she didn't initially choose to live in as a child. This connects the importance of parental responsibility to the issues of racism. It isn't a copout but rather a reality that we grow up thinking and doing what our guardians (or those we look up to) think and do. Have patience and grace with her.
I can't help but think about the scene from the movie "42" about Jackie Robinson, where the kid is sitting next to his father at the baseball field, listening to his father badger the black man with racial slurs, and soon after, even though he didn't necessarily feel it in his heart at first, begins to mimmick his fathers words of racism along with the rest of the crowd. It's a very telling scene of how racism lives on...
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Anyways, take a look at a child, they almost never ostracize another race or color or religion or anything. You are welcome in their world until you give them reason to exclude you from their world.
But after the child goes through all of their impressionable phases, the parents, children and community around them, along with media, influence them to take a certain stance on race, moral beliefs, philosophy, etc that can wind up being narcissistic and hateful to others that are different. Me, I want to teach my child to have specific convictions in all things but be willing to love and accept everything/everyone.
The best thing that happened to me for my racial reconciliation was to make solid, meaningful friendships with the "other". In my case, it was black folks.
Memphis is notorious for having willful segregation in the city, mainly because each race believes things about the other that simply isnt true. But you can't figure those things out until you know the other.
