Life / Polish people and racism. [943]

i've read quite a few entries and unfortunately i have to agree with some of them. being polish myself i feel kind of uneasy about admitting that we are racist, sad but true. i am polish polish, not polish american, living in the usa. i have an interracial marriage! but i guess i am an exception. i think we - polish folks - are a very insecure nation, with a very low self-esteem, which is partly historically motivated. but only partly. our country is 99% mono-racial. moreover, it's all whites. some of us may have some distant ties to other nationalities. and we are pretty much all catholics. we are all the same to an outsider. i am an atypical pole, i am not religious at all, i hate vodka :), i do not steal, i have a very high academic degree and i teach english in america. i am not racist (how can i be? i married a successful businessman who happens to be an african american). i am actually quite embarrassed by my own country fellows in the usa and elsewhere. so i am all those things, but at the same time i am not. people are actually shocked when they find out i am from poland and teach at an american college. i think that polish people create a sort of protective shield in the form of racism. now, sometimes we can be real asses. i am gonna admit it. we are highly critical of others, but to ourselves we are crystal clear. we do not know how to mix only because we never had to. we do not accept other religions because we don't know them. isn't it ignorant?! we are always thinking others are trying to screw us because that has been done to us and our country many times in the past 1000 years. we are a nation of complainers, it's in our DNA. we owe it to comunism, we have a scar in our minds. but i also think we have gotten better, we are a progressive nation these days. EU is teaching us that, and it's good. i am ashamed that some of us do certain things that later on create stereotypes and misrepresent polish people as an entire nation. at first i was pissed when i heard those polish jokes around me, but i grew to understand where they come from. i remember once a guy said to me that polish people are dumb. and i asked him to elaborate on that and he was at a loss for words. i challenged that guy and it turned out that he was dumb. not for nothing, but polish people have opinions of other nations as well. and amercians are stereotyped by us, too. but that's not the point. the point is to learn more of others no matter how different they might seem to be. and people are different, cultures are different, that's what makes it all worth exploring. i have learnt a great deal in the usa, not only about life, but about people ... as an educator i have to hope that one day we will open up more for others, but it's been taking a long time. by the way, i think i am one of very few polish people who will vote for senator obama. bottom line, it's all about one and the same thing proven time and time again in the history of civilization. it's all about us, regular people living on the same planet, breathing in the same air, ain't it? anna