Racism In Sunday School
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 
I was just standing over the stove buttering some bread and wondering how old the butter was that I was using. Sometimes I will take just a bit off the brick in the refrigerator and put it in a little glass bowl so that there is just enough soft butter for a piece of bread, because it keeps me from hogging down half a loaf. The thing is, I don't remember when I took this particular little bit of butter out of the fridge, and so I started wondering if the butter was rancid. How long does it take for butter to go off?
Anyways, thinking about how the butter might be rotten brought to mind this ridiculous thing that a sunday school teacher told me once, and I guffawed right there mid spread. I am almost embarrassed to write down what she told our sunday school class, because it resulted in over a decade of racist thinking from when I was seven or eight years old, and I didn't even know it was racist at the time.
Okay, here goes. This sunday school teacher told our class that men who wore turbans smelled bad because they wore rotten butter under them. I ended up walking around for more than ten years with the assumption that men in turbans stank, which is ridiculous, because my male neighbours both across the street and next door wore turbans, and they were perfectly decent, non-smelly people that I saw all the time. I highly doubt they walked around with a wad of rotten dairy product stashed under those wrapped scarves. Still, that sunday school teacher's stupid statement stuck with me, because you should totally trust whatever your sunday school teacher tells you, right?
I hereby extend an apology for my misinformed ignorance lo those many years.
Also, I think I just ate a bunch of rancid butter. I do not recommend it. It tastes funky.
Reader Comments (11)
oh my god, what an awful thing for a person to say....
especially to young impressionable minds.
also, that reminds me to put my butter back in the fridge!
EWWW for rancid butter.
Omg, the things my Sunday school used to tell us...
So, what would you think about a teacher of Mythology who invites a guest speaker to class.
Said guest speaker had an "out of body, near death" experience.
Was the speaker set up as a myth? or were the students supposed to actually believe that you can see yourself dead on a table?
Inquiring minds.
Ugh. That's horrible. I went to a Catholic school that had a handful of students of other religions simply because, well, it was the neighborhood school. Anyway, a friend of mine was of Chinese heritage, her family not religious in any way, and one of the nuns flat out told her she wouldn't get to heaven because... she wasn't catholic.
I'm not making that up.
Needless to say, I'm no longer a practicing anything.
That is so terrible to say- ignorance is the sin there. I've never had rancid butter and I never refrigerate it except in the hot summer months!
Forgetting the fact that this woman was an idiot, I was amusing myself by thinking if this was TRUE, would could be the possible religious or cultural significance of this act? Something to do with the Hindu respect for the cow?
What happened to your butter bell? Does it work or was it a dud?
Jen
That's so horrible to teach that to children!
Like Kathy, I'm a former Catholic. I also had some very ignorant comments made by those "in charge" during Catholic grade school. It's hard sometimes to disconnect the people in the Church and the Church itself from the religion.
You know, I heard that somewhere along the line as a child, too, although I never attended Sunday School. That is a weird tale to tell.
ErinH
It's incredible how the crazy things that adults tell you when you're a kid will stick with you for years, until one day you have that "wait just a minute!" moment.
This is so random, but the Google ads!
Turbans for Chemotherapy
Sunday School Management
Butter Dishes
Anyway, Sunday School teachers. Often the most well-intentioned, but misguided souls on the planet. A seed planted in a child's mind can take root and grow for years before it is pruned by experience and knowledge. That can be a good thing, often it is not.
Great post, once again.