Do you remember when you first became aware of your race?

I was 7 or 8, visiting an elderly relative in the big city, where she lived in a very diverse neighborhood. We were riding in the bus when I noticed the young woman sitting across from me. She had the most beautiful eyelashes, I thought, long and curly. I must have been staring at her. All of a sudden she turned to me, scowling, and then started yelling at me for being a white girl. I didn't know why she cared so much about my outfit -- a white blouse, white skirt, white socks and even white sneakers, but my great aunt just stiffened up and told me to ignore her. For a long time I wondered what was wrong with that outfit, until I told my mother, and she explained that it hadn't been about my clothes.

In the 70s, even friends would make stupid racial remarks.

I grew up in Hawaii, and I knew my "race" was different since probably first grade.

And I'm white.

I went to. They also had to sit in the back of the bus, use separate bathrooms and drinking fountains.

Perhaps I was about 5 when I knew there were different races. I was in the dominant race, but in a religion which was in the minority and not universally accepted (Judaism).

the 'n word' at some black kids. I remember being confused, and thinking these bigger kids knew something I did not.
I love that song from "South Pacific", you got to be taught to hate and fear.
That's exactly how it works.

I remember going to the US mainland and being amazed at all the white people. I grew up thinking everyone was Japanese, Hawaiian, or Portugese, except for my family.

And I thought everybody was Catholic.

Funny how we see the world differently when we're little.

I remember when my son was a little boy, and we were at the park playing. Somebody kicked the ball over to another group of kids, and one of the big kids said something like "go get the ball, it's over by those black kids".

My boy said, "They aren't black. They're blue".

They were wearing blue shirts.

Makes me think of what is going on in Jena. I can't believe it. We are going backwards.

My second grader told me that there were lots of black kids in his class. I could only think of one. It turns out that my son thought everyone in the class with black hair (including him) was black.

Which actually makes sense, since no one in his class literally had black -- or white -- skin.

and I hated it. I spent years wondering what was wrong with me. Why was I so damned BROWN????? I secretly thought my dad brought me home from the battlefield in Vietnam. I remember older women coming up and telling my mom how adorable my tow-head sisters were while they skimmed over me like I was dog shit. And I remember watching the only black girl at my high school putting white powder on her face for several hours a day. How sad. Sometimes I wish we would just all marry interacially so race would cease to exist.

But I think the human condition will always find differences. Gays are the last group that can be hated by people who feel good about doing it. There will always be something.

reproval. I wish the world would just WAKE UP!

As an adult, I realize that the point is to learn to accept and love the "other".

There will always be an "other".

Just look at DU.. it's always a smaller category of "US AND THEM".

"I think the whole world is crazy except me and thee, and sometimes I worry about thee."

There's never an ending to the divisions, until we accept "the other".

At least without the race we could eliminate some hatred. Yes people will always find some reason to look down on others, but this reason needs to go! Where is that quote from? Its hilarious!

when you feel different from everyone else in your family.

That's how most gay kids feel, I think, unless they have another gay person in the family.

I am so much less likely to judge, and everytime I see a mixed race couple I think "THANK GOD!". I also sympathize much with gays, as my best friend in HS was one. He couldnt tell his parents until he was 27!

I said the same thing elsewhere and was told how ignorant I was, how I'd miss blue eyes, etc.

Bull.

I am Irish, and I have cousins who are Irish & Black, and Irish & American Indian. When I was a kid, growing up in Southern California, we worshiped "brown" skin. Having a bitchen tan was sometimes our only goal. I envied my Black and American Indian cousins... their skin was the perfect color... and they didn't have the cursed freckles the rest of us were plagued with. And the beautiful bone structure! I hated my round Irish face.

I'm hoping these are lessons we all need to learn, and that we, by virtue of open discussions such as these, are learning the necessary lessons.

When my daughter was very young, she loved to participate in Latino Days, Black History Month, Filipino Day, etc., in her school. She loved hearing about other cultures, eating different foods, seeing different ways to dress. She realized on the last day of school in third grade, that there was no Irish Day... no Swedish Day... she was crushed. She had celebrated everyone else's heritage, and no one paid a bit of attention to her. She hadn't been bigoted a day in her life. She hadn't owned slaves. She never hurt a soul, literally or figuratively. It was a sad summer. All I could do was try to keep her from being bitter.

Humans are so stupid. Stupidity comes in all colors.

Bring her to New Orleans in March. We celebrate everything. There's even a St Patirck's Day Parade in the Irish Channel.

She'd love that.

Not even a shamrock cut from green paper...

My great granny was from NOLA. "If you leave my house hungry, angry, lonely or sad, it's your own damn fault!" LOL! She was a great lady... the hospitality alone was unbelievable.

She said she liked her coffee Louisiana style... Sweet as love, strong as sin, black as death and hot as hell. I never knew is she made these things up or if they were local sayings. I loved all her funny sayings regardless.

There should be a sign as you roll into town... We Celebrate Everything:)

What a great city. Hope you are all doing better.

How silly. It cant be blended out or covered up. Well frankly there is nothing more attractive to me than a hispanic man with green eyes. I love the dark skin with light eyes. And look at Vanessa Williams.

I do hope some day its ok to celebrate white ethnicity. I love the European culture.

You know whats so funny is my parents were surfers in CA, I always thought my dad (American Indian and Irish) had a bitchen tan! Even after 10 years in Colorado! HA!

That's hilarious! Bitchen tans rule:)

I had a Latina friend (we said "Chicana" back in the day) and our coloring (sun enhanced for me, natch) was so similar, people were always asking if we were sisters. We'd giggle and say, yep!

I love the green eyes and mocha complexion of my Black/Irish cousins. But it was the American Indian cousins that really scored... gorgeous people. Absolutely, unfreakingbelieveably gorgeous!

in the Black community. Hubby has green eyes, but he's fair skinned. The last GrandDaughter has Grampa and her Mom's green eyes, but she has this built in tan to die for. The green/blue eyes stand out more on the tanned skin.

BTW, they throw cabbages at the St Patrick's Parade.

Cabbages! LOL!

Well I never found one, but the bone structure is still the most beautiful ever! I drool to this day....

talked of color or ethnicity. We were all just poor people together, sharing milk, bread, sugar, hand me down clothes and whatever else you needed to get by. It was so much easier living with all poor people because everyone wanted to help each other with no prejudging of any kind. We were just broke as hell and trying to survive.

Now I noticed my lack of wealth at an early age, the rich kids never let you forget it!

I saw my first African-Americans at the age of four when we took a wintertime trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

in our neighborhood and it seemed to irritate people quite a bit for reasons I didn't understand then. It was frightening to a little girl.

I was 10 or 11 and I came home late from school with a bloody lip and a black eye.
My mom asked me what happened but I was too ashamed to tell her the truth
so I lied and told her some kids beat me up just for fun.
Later that night when I asked my mom and her partner what a "dyke" was
they put it together and realized I was beat up cause my mom is gay.

Kinda sucks they never explained it to me before then. I think they didnt realize
that I was smart and mature enough to understand and handle the truth.
up until then I thought only men could be "fags" or "queers" and it was always
presented to me in a really shitty and evil way.

Oh yeah....now I remember. My uncle had this saint bernard. Sweetest dog you'd ever meet.
One day we were hanging out somewhere, I was like five or six, these strangers came around
and the dog went completely bonkers. I asked my uncle what was wrong with the dog and he
told me the dog dosnt like "niggers". I didnt really understand what that was so he sat
me down an explained it to me all the while trying to get me to hate "niggers" as well. For awhile I hated "niggers" too. I didnt even know what the hell that was but if my uncle said it, it must be true.
It wasnt till I was a bit older that I had this friend Kirk. He was this black kid and he was my best friend. My Aunt and uncle told me I couldnt play with Kirk cause he was a "nigger" and not
good enough to hang out with a white kid. Thats the day I became aware of my whiteness and have hated my aunt and uncle ever since. fucking duche bags.

People still look at me oddly, but it was because we differed so. I always feel odd checking the "white" box, since I'm the only one in the family with this coloring. And yes, is my biological parent.

It will be interesting to see my daughter's children someday, because she is a redhead and her husband has black hair and brown skin.

Most in my generation from that set of grandparents look more like him. Not sure what or where, but pretty sure not just Dane.

"human". I hate that stupid question. If I think I can get away with it, that's what I do.

Try it sometime.

that it was a deal was when I was fourteen and fell in love with an african american who was fifteen. This was in the early seventies. I had never seen any kind of racial nor ethnic prejudice from my parents till then. I never saw any after we broke up because of it either but I KNEW it was there underneath from that point on. Harsh lesson.
The weird thing was that it wasn't that they objected to him personally, but that they were afraid for what their little girl would have to deal with socially. I was totally shocked by their reaction.Still to this day....I wonder what ever happened to him. A great guy who loved Jimi Hendrix.

They would not have raised a broad minded person if they werent the same?

But I probably realized it when I started school.

Part of desegregation forced busing movement. 30 of us kids were bused across town. No one told us why. I remember my mom and dad having some fights about it.

A few weeks into the school year...there was a march by some students from the local high school on our elementary school. We all had to hide behind the wall separating us from the hallway down the middle of the school building.

I remember hearing the chants..."Bring 'em out! Bring out the white kids."

Then the principle..."Take one more step through that door and you will die." Silence...

After a few minutes the principle came by our class and told us everything was ok...I loved that man.

Peace.

I lived in the south, so we didn't go through that. I would see the screaming parents on tv as the buses would pull off. I didn't understand that at all when I was a kid. It wasn't the kids fault they were being bused to their neighborhood school. Those screaming parents were taking it out on those poor kids.

I will never forget those screaming parents.

I remember the screaming parents.

Peace.

It was in the middle of nowhere. EVERYONE was bused there. I heard about busing and I thought, "what's wrong with riding the bus? We all do it." It wasn't until years later that I learned why the founders of this school did this...to avoid the pitfalls of the busing issue and make it fair for everyone.

who directed a movie called "Cotton Comes To Harlem". I saw it on tv late one night when I was about 16. It's a brilliant film that turns racial stereotypes on their heads. I was pretty stoned and when shown what it was like to be on the receiving end of racism, in that frame of mind, it really sunk in. It literally changed my life in an instant. I am forever grateful for that experience.

...and some kids parroted some of the ignorant crap they probably learned at home, declaring that they'd never drink from that fountain again. I suddenly was aware that I was white; and I felt ashamed of it.

not all whites are racists, and not all racists are white.

:hi:

That same year, my grandmother, who was the granddaughter of an Alabama plantation owner, informed me that, while she was sure my friend was a nice little girl; people "like us" shouldn't play with people "like them". :-(

Fortunately, my mother told me otherwise.

I'm half Mexican, and while my older daughters got light skin, my younger daughter did not. She managed to pick up on the importance of this in kindergarten. She would come home from time to time and ask me about her skin color, and why it was darker, and ask me if it was pretty. Breaks my heart.

It's so sad that society clings to somebody's (probably a rich person's) notion of beauty, when it's all good.
Hugs for your daughter... :hug::hug::hug:

but her dad's mother (raised by rich parents in the richest, whitest part of town) called the poor area the 'ethnically challenged' area... so if her own grandmother would say that around her, god only knows what kind of shit she hears at school.

I can't wait to get out of this state.

Thanks for the hugs... :hug:

and the tanning parlors and raising their risk of melonoma in order to get that pretty brown skin.

You just can't win. Madison Ave. makes all women think they're not pretty enough so they can sell product.

And so many women eat it up.

I don't know why anyone would buy those awful fashion magazines.

I lived in Arkansas that year, and recall an elderly black woman walking past my grandmother's house. I had been taught to respect my elders, but this woman would never look up. AND, unfortunately, many of my relatives used the "n" word quite a bit. For me, I could never figure out why someone would be seen as "less than" because of the color of their skin. Nor could I figure out at that age why I would be taught, on one hand, to respect my elders, and on the other hand, have some of those elders be called a derogatory name.

I've always fallen on the side of respecting my elders, and respecting others in general, regardless of race. If I have a problem with someone, it is because of their actions or attitudes, NOT because of the color of their skin.

but the fact they were black never, to me, made a difference. My 20th reunion was interesting.

Circumstances prevent us from never considering this fact.

there is always TV to remind you of the larger context. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

Like in kindergarten, when a kid in my rich WASPy private school asked me why I was the color of doo-doo.

Sometimes when I hear shit like that it makes me ashamed of my race and its history
in the western hemisphere.
I mean I get over it, I know its not me but damn.

When I moved in 5th grade, some of the boys at my new school called me "brillo" and "S.O.S." because of my frizzy hair. Kids can be so mean.

Is that in America, most white never have to regard their own color. Their existence as citizens in this country has always been a given.

But if you're a person of color, you see that the cards have never been stacked in your deck... There's always a different set of standards for you. That to compete in the wider world you have to be twice as good as your white counterparts to get equal due.

The history books never talk about the Africans who built ancient empires, as their white counterparts did, but history begins when they were brought here in chains.

That your cultural icons are always out of the "Mainstream". When an "All American" is described, you are out of place.

That even in the Constitution, your ancestors were only 3/5ths of a person.

That even the mere notion of segregation exists.

:thumbsup:

As I'm sure you're aware, there are some (but not all) elements that are similar for being a woman. The "norm" is not just being white, it is being male. For example, the default pronoun is "he." (At least it always used to be.) Then there are all the words like "mankind," "chairman," etc. And women had no vote, so in that sense were not counted as people at all.

:thumbsup:

From the point of view of a child, everyone is just like you and your family until you find out differently. A white child like me may never have to give the matter any consideration. It is another one of those unacknowledged privileges. A black child does not have that luxury.

about it in "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html

The article is short, accessible, and very eye-opening.

as far back as I can remember, when I was 2-3 years old.

Whites and blacks have always had a lot more contact in the South than elsewhere. Even in Jim Crow days, I knew black people from the market, the museum, stores. Segregation was never total.

My parents always talked to black people in a polite and friendly way, the same as they talked to white people. They told me segregation was wrong.

& when I was young, I noticed that they had dignity, no matter how poor. And the wisdom that comes from seeing how people treat those that ar less moneyed than them..

"Whites and blacks have always had a lot more contact in the South than elsewhere."

My mother was always polite to black people too.

Miss Elizabeth lived across the street from us. She lived there before my family moved into the neighborhood, and continued to live there for many decades, moving only a few years ago when she became too old to live on her own.

Miss Elizabeth lived with her mother, and they looked after her sister's two young sons, who also lived there. The older boy, Philip, was about my age. When I was five and he was six, we decided we would get married because, you know, we lived across the street from each other, and that was obviously how these things were decided. We announced it to all the neighbors.

Years later my mother told me about the worried calls she got from all those neighbors. She just laughed them off. These were the same people who told her, when the family first moved in, that she would want to wash and repaint her kitchen because the last owners used to let the coloreds visit them.

Philip and I didn't marry. ;) We never even kissed. I got mad when I found out he was also "dating" other little girls. But we stayed friends. He was a talented actor (which is what he grew up to become) and used to lead us in different street theater-type things, if such a thing existed in the 60s.

We did this thing where we would wait for a car to drive down our street, and then pretend to get in a fight. Sometimes Philip and his brother would "beat up" one of the white kids, and sometimes we would gang up on Philip, who would howl piteously and beg for help.

We tried it a number of times and the results were always the same. White on black attack, the driver would slow down to look but not stop or say anything. Black on white attack, the car would stop and/or the driver would yell and threaten. (Drivers were always white.)

That kinda killed the game for us. It wasn't funny when it was so obvious what would happen.

In 64 we chased cars with political bumper stickers. We cheered and clapped for any car with an LBJ sticker, and booed any car with a Goldwater sticker. It cracked us up to see the Republicans get upset. They were grown-ups in cars, we were just kids! And on our way to and from school, we used to peel Goldwater stickers off bumpers.

Good times. :)

:)

:)

Even though the subject matter is a bit sad in some cases
I get the chills thinking about being a kid again.
Thank you for giving me something good to dream about tonight.
Reading some of these post's has put me in tears and I'm a big
macho guy who never cries.

Thanks again DU, finally I can go to sleep.

What a nice group of people.

Helps me to feel more hope for this world.

I had a great American Indian headdress, and my next door neighbor had a great cowboy hat and six-shooter. We'd hang out together and not really think much of it, until a neighbor lady once told us, we "had it wrong", that I should have the cowboy hat and my friend the headdress. That's when I realized I was white and he was Indian. Still have the headdress though.

but my Mom told me about an incident when I was about 3 or 4. It was just after Easter and my baby brother and I had gotten chocolate Easter bunnies. She said we were in the car waiting for my Dad to get off work. A black woman walked by and I asked her (my Mom) if that was a chocolate lady.

Oh the innocence of childhood.

This was back in the early 60's and I am a white chick.

With licorice hair.

;)

Welcome to DU, dandylion!

A Scotch Irish girl with Cajun French blood- her father didn't want her to marry no "dam Italian". I didn't give it a thought- I am half Italian- I sort of assumed that all white people were white, you know? Then I learned he was like that because the Italians & most of New Orleans, didn't like the Irish.
And about New Orleans. You live there, you get used to all races & all in betweens. Before the government stepped in, the Creoles, originally a term for native born French & Spanish, evolved to mixed races, were very proud of their heritage. They had this paper bag test: you couldn't be admitted into Creole society if your skin was darker than a paper bag. take a look at New Orleans' so called black leaders- they are mostly Creole.

happened first

growing up in white suburbia

seeing news about busing--the story/news i saw was black kids being bused and having to ride to school for nearly an hour. i felt bad for those kids who had to ride a bus for so long and go to a school so far from their home. (i didn't understand the situation--i lived within walking distance to my school)

seeing an ad or article about a man who turned the color of his skin from light to dark by taking some drugs (thinking wow--i could change the color of my skin?)

my grandma using the "N" word and me, as a child, telling her that wasn't nice
(i don't know how i knew--i don't remember--but i knew it definitely wasn't nice)

then later, seeing jesse jackson on the tv, talking to a small group of little black girls, telling them something to the effect of "you're black and you're beautiful" and then they said to him "i'm black and i'm beautiful." and i thought it was true--they were beautiful. absolutely beautiful

omg--just remembered. there was a tv show "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and they did an episode called "Where the woodbine twineth" (or "you never believe me") about a little white girl who had a black doll she would talk to--and sometimes you could hear two voices as they played--at the end of the show they traded places and the white girl became the doll and the black doll came to life. i've never forgotten that show--and i finally got a copy of it a couple years ago. i was probably five and a half years old when i saw it. THAT was probably the first time i became aware of the concept of race

when you viewed it again as an adult?

i only remembered things that focused on the little girl, her imaginary characters and her beloved doll, the mean lady (the girls aunt) who chases away the black girl come to life only to discover the white girl was now the doll and couldn't be switched back again. and a little song the girls sang.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394103/

I used to love Alfred Hitchcock. I should have known his stuff was still around.

went to a school with only white students. We had traveled to another town for a jr. high basketball game and people were shouting racial epithets out the window of our bus at the black kids in front of the school. I was stunned why anyone would do that.

Up to then, I had gone to an alternative elementary school with kids from all walks of life in well-integrated (and student-chosen) learning groups. It had never occurred to me that there was any difference between us as I was race blind to the challenges many of them probably faced because of race. I knew about slavery from my mom talking to me about it, but that was "all in the past" in my brain.

without having to change your whole culture, too. How did you deal with the smallmindedness at your new school?

that all those kids were doing the same things the white kids did...go to school, play sports, hang out with friends, and try to figure out what to with our lives. There was nothing to fear. It was to no avail. I hated that school and after 4 years, I finally got my mom to agree to move to a new school district. It happened to be 80% minority students and I felt a much greater acceptance there than at the farm school. Classes were no longer chosen by the students of course, but our lunch social group was. It was a huge mix of kids from all backgrounds.

I married a guy from that farm school with similar feelings as I had at the time. His brother is dating a black woman and his best friend from said small-minded farm school will no longer speak to him because of it. Really sad. We are all in our 40s now. I guess there is just no growing up for some people. Fortunately, his family all accepts their relationship and we all have a nice time together.

as to break off a friendship...

Honestly, I have to wonder what century these people are living in...

I was aware of the many different colors in my neighborhood, but I didn't believe one was better or worse than the other.
I was about 7 or 8, at a movie with a classmate. She was extremely pale skinned and blond. When it was time for the intermission, she told me to give her my money and she would get our snacks. I asked why. She patiently explained that she would be waited on before I would because she was lighter. I gave her the money and stood back to watch. Sure enough, all of the light skinned kids were waited on before the darker kids.
WOW! I learned a lot. I hadn't noticed that before but from that day on I started paying attention.

BTW, the clerks who attended to the fair skinned kids first were dark skinned blacks. I don't think it was a conscious thing with the clerks. They probably would have chosen the blond doll.

I was a bit older before I had a handle on the race thing. I'd hear adults discussing blacks and whites but I couldn't tell who was who because the blacks and whites in the neighborhood looked similar.

The kids, with their fresh eyes, are seeing the similarities, while the adults are drawing all these (to us) weird distinctions.

Not long ago, 1992 maybe, I took a greyhound bus to somewhere in the south.
I remember talking to this black girl on the bus who was from wherever I was headed
and she was telling me about how race relations were there.
She told me that white people always were waited on first, even if the cashier was black.
I remember I kinda got pissed off at her and told her she was full of shit and just trying
to make me feel bad or whatever. Well that put an end to my flirting.
So I get off the bus, we say our now frosty goodbyes and go our seperate ways.
I entered the bus staion and after awhile went to the concessions counter to get a snack.
As I approached the counter a black couple who were in line in front of me stepped
away from the counter and waved me ahead. I couldnt move, I was shocked. The women behind the counter, also black says to me "what are you waiting for? your first in line." or something to
that affect.
I was so ashamed of myself. I'm in my twenties by this time and this is the nineties for
christ sake. The girl on the bus was right. All I kept thinking about was how this stuff just
doesnt happen anymore. maybe in the sixties or seventies, but the nineties?

Wow...I was feeling good awhile ago but now, not so good.
Man, sometimes a stroll down memory lane isnt so good afterall.
goodnight friends, I will be dreaming about you.

living in a white suburb and for some reason we went thru South Central Los Angeles where for the first time I saw black people. I guess I was just surprised that there were people who were different colored than myself. A few years later on TV I saw children my age having fire hoses and dogs used on them because they were other than white. I remember being horrified and not understanding WHY. :-(

I, along with my two brothers were raised by my grandparents who both worked. They hired a black woman named Essie to take care of us and cook and clean house. I absolutely adored Essie. Each day, we took Essie home, but sometimes, when racial tension was high, there would be rock-throwing and near riots, and on those days, we took Essie downtown, where'd she take a bus home. Once, when we let her out of the car, I jumped out, and chased her down because she'd forgotten to hug me goodby. I remember being very surprised at how that had scared Essie and my grandpa, I couldn't understand. The other thing I couldn't understand was that Essie had kids the same age as we were. I asked her once who watched her kids and she told me they took care of themselves. I declared them "too little" and insisted she bring them with her and that we would all play together. I never even met her kids. So my first thoughts about the differences between races was that black children had to take care of themselves so that their mama could take care of white children. I assumed this meant black children were more grown-up and had more freedom. Ha. This was all before school, so I'd guess around age 4 or 5.

Did you ever ask your grandparents about that?

and never getting an answer.

Can't they?

:shrug:

I went from an almost all white area in Modesto, California
to a 95% black school in Oklahoma City. Never knew what hit
me.

I got my ass kicked regularly because the black girls thought
I rolled my eyes at them. They stole my glasses and broke them.

It was bad.

Sorry to hear about your experiences, though. I guess we shouldn't over-idealize childhood. Kids can be awfully mean, too.

I'm white and grew up middle class in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Don't let that fool you. I grew up in Danbury, not Darien, New Canaan, or even Ridgefield. Nevertheless, I had been at least somewhat aware of race from a young age.

I was born in Ohio, and my entire extended family still lives there, including my maternal grandfather, who is an honest-to-God liberal. He was drafted into World War II, survived, and became a pacifist. He donates to charity, and had given over four gallons of blood before the Red Cross told him it wasn't safe for him to donate any more.

When I was a kid, my mother pulled a picture out of a photo album. It was in black and white, and it was of a middle-aged white man and a little white girl marching down a Midwestern street surrounded by blacks. The photo was of my grandfather and my mother, as a toddler, marching for civil rights in the early 1960s.

My parents rarely talked politics, which is a bit of a tradition in Midwestern families (or at least it used to be), but they made it perfectly clear to me what race was, and what racism is. I've known about race for as long as I can remember.

To satisfy my grandfather, who is a zealous Catholic as well as a zealous liberal, my parents sent me to a Catholic school for grades K-8. At any given time, there were no more than three minorities in this school at any given time. It seemed surreal learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. in a history class which held no black students whatsoever.

Then, upon matriculating into high school, I was sent to Danbury High. It is the only public high school in a city of over 70,000 residents. It is the largest high school in Connecticut, and was the third largest in New England at the time of my enrollment. It didn't matter what your parents earned, what side of the tracks you lived on, or what you looked like. If you went to high school in Danbury, you went there with every other kid in town.

Culture shock.

On one hand, I was surrounded by amazing diversity. On the other hand, I had no idea so much diversity existed. Moving from a small parochial middle school to a massive public high school was a tad frightening to say the least, and in a situation like that, the worst parts really stick out for the first few months. So, when I saw black students, the only ones that really stood out were the gang members. When I saw the Hispanic students, the only ones that really stood out were the ones that didn't speak English.

After a while, I just got accustomed to the whole thing. I met a lot more people, coming from a wide range of backgrounds, and my fears dissolved. However, one instance really stands out above the rest. I was walking out to the student parking lot one day during my freshman year, and was wearing a black overcoat (it was November in New England, and I find a nice overcoat does the job against the cold and the rain). On my way out, I was approached by a black student who stepped in front of me, blocking my path. Now, it should be noted here that there was a clique of computer nerds at DHS who all wore black overcoats. I knew them rather well, but I wasn't a full-fledged member... my calculator wasn't big enough.

Anyway, the black student says to me: "Can you tell me something?"

I respond: "Sure." (I think my voice cracks just a bit here)

Him: "What's the deal with the coat?"

Me: "Well, it's cold outside..."

Him: "Come on, man, there's like twelve of you guys who wear those things."

Me: "Oh, that. It's just a bunch of guys into computers. That's all."

Him: "Ah, ok. I heard them niggaz was racist."

I gave him a chuckle and assured him that was not the case. He seemed to buy it.

That made me think. Somebody had seen an insular group of people dress in a peculiar manner and assumed something was up. Eventually, word got around that these people were bad, racists in this case. Now, that belief was completely unfounded. The coats indicated membership in a clique having nothing whatsoever to do with racism. Then it hit me: this is what it is like to be a victim of prejudice. Without even knowing me, somebody had assumed I was a bad person. Then I began to wonder how many other people were under the same erroneous impression as the young man I had spoken to.

Obviously, I'm not equating my experience to those of real minorities who have experienced real persecution for something as trivial as the color of their skin, but that experience really left a mark on my consciousness. I immediately understood why my grandfather and my parents were virulent civil rights supporters.

other kid decided to speak to you, instead of letting the situation fester.

And it sounds like your family has been an inspiration for you. Lucky man!

I remembered thinking they were scrutinized by store clerks much more than I was and also the clerks would address me first when we were at the counter - I was so young then that even though I was smart enough to notice it I did not understand it

before I was 4 years old. My father was the most bigoted man I've ever known. I lived in the whitest of white neighborhoods. I had only seen black people on tv and always accompanied by my father yelling racial slurs. I was terrified of my father's yelling. It turned into a fear of what he was yelling at. When I was 4, my mother took me to grand central station in downtown LA. It was my first experience in the "big world". When we walked into the building I had a complete breakdown. I started running and screaming in fear. I was screaming my father's racial slurs. I had no idea what I was saying, but the embarrassment to my mother was overwhelming. She never let me forget that event and I never let her forget how angry I was at him years later for instilling that fear and racism in me at such a young age.

A friend of mine, Jamie, was having a birthday party and her mother Priscilla had invited all the kids in the neighborhood to come, have some cake and ice cream, and goof off. Myself and a girl, Heather, happened to be the only white kids in that neighborhood, and we ended up getting chased off because of it by a few of Jamie's older cousins and their parents. That wound up being a hell of a mess between all the adults involved, and Jamie, the poor girl, had absolutely no more idea what the hell was happening than we did.

after the jackasses left, Priscilla had us come over, apologized to us, and broke her back trying to make a happy birthday. Life went on, and Jamie's older brother wound up teaching me to hunt - go figure, huh? :)

I was about 6-7 years old. We went to visit a cousin of ours. Her name was Elsie. She had very pale skin , red hair, and green eyes. I remember asking my grandmother why we were visiting a white woman. She snapped at me, " that's not a white woman, that's your cousin".

Soon after I met relatives with blond hair and blue eyes. Red hair and gray eyes etc. After that I didn't think much about it at all. Until I went to a 99.9% white private school and was called a "nigger". I was surprised how much it hurt.

It always does when you think you're like everyone else-- and then other people tell you, you aren't.

Welcome to DU, candymarl!

Honestly. When I was three, my Dad and my first stepmother, who was Alaskan Indian, took me to Hawaii. We came back a year later and lived in San Jose around a bunch of hippies and others. My dad had friends of all races, so I don't remember thinking anything about any of that.

Then we moved to Central Oregon when I was seven and for several years I don't even think I SAW a black person. Indians, yes. We had one fellow student at my grade school who was Chicano--actually, that was his last name until the school made him use another.

Even when we moved to Washington I didn't see a lot of African American kids. My dad still had friends of all races, more or less, but I was a perpetual outsider and made few friends of any race myself.

I never really thought about race as something significant. I just thought people were people.

Unfortunately, this made me pretty ignorant of racism until I was older.

When I was sixteen I was hitchhiking from Oregon down to California, caught a ride with a guy who took me down to L.A. with him and I spent a couple weeks with him and his family--a lone white kid visiting places like Hollywood and Vine, Venice Beach, and Malibu with a family of Black folks. We got a hold of one of my dad's old friends and I earned enough money helping his old man around the house for him to buy me a bus ticket. Right before I left his sister told me, "you're a strange white kid."

I asked her, "what do you mean?"

"Most white folks will tell us how many black friends they've had and all that. You never did."

I just shrugged. "I'm not a liar."

The only criteria I ever had for friendship was anyone was interests in common...and, being that my interests were books, rock music, role-playing games, and smoking dope, and there were so few people of color my age around me at any given time, I just never considered it.

People are people. It's what they do that matters, not what they look like.

I'd be interested in reading it.

One of these days I'll sit down and put together a piece about all my travels...

My dad wants me to write a biography...lol...I tell him I haven't done enough yet.

I said "Cynthia, your hair feels different than mine" and she explained it was cause she was black.

So I looked at her skin and my skin.

Before that I had no idea/concept of race.

Just didn't see the difference in skin color.

I came home crying. My dad who is white was mad and wanted to confront the kids, but my mom said they were telling the truth, I was a Jap but not dirty...I have spent a lifetime meeting people too polite to say what those kids were so readily willing to reveal...the ugly little secret that always exists beneath the skin of racists...

that all my friends were Irish. She was surprised, and she knew that at least one wasn't even part Irish -- the little Japanese-American girl. She asked why I thought she was Irish. Why? Because she wore green on Saint Patrick's day. Isn't that what makes you Irish?

I also remember thinking Doreen was especially cool because she and her grandmother spoke some other language at home.

When I grew up in Miami, FL, the schools were segregated, so I did not have any black friends.

In the non-negative way, I remember my dad telling us about how his parents were from Mexico, and he's of Mexican descent, and that we were all half-Mexican.

In the negative way, I remember being pulled over regularly by the cops when he was driving, for no real reason... because car was a clunker and we look Mexican and lived in a nice neighborhood is why I guess. Never happened with my white mom. Weird, huh.

I got pulled over more than once for driving a clunker in my parent's neighborhood, and I'm white. Police really seem to hate old cars.

I've been stopped for foolishness (never got a ticket) but invariably they asked where I worked, and always added how they couldn't "afford" to drive that kind of car on their salary. :eyes:

and that caused half of my mom's family to lose their damn minds (this was my grandmother's second marriage). Her one daughter from that relationship had it pretty bad growing up. So I was aware of that part of it from a very early age, too.

When suddenly the black population in my neighborhood went to zero. In my school, it went to one. Freaky.

I was riding in a car with some relatives in Kansas City, KS. One of the adults in the car, I believe it was an aunt of mine, pointed to a man on the street and said "Look, slack, there's a Negro!"

I waved at the Negro, and he waved back.

So does Topeka. A lot of white people are truly afraid of dark-skinned people (and vice-versa).

Kids are not born with racism.

Cute!

We are of Mexican descent, but very fair skinned. However, my grandma is very dark skinned. My mom was paying with a check. She had all the correct ID, she had done it before. However the cashier took one look at my grandma and said she couldn't accept the check. My mom was really angry and asked to see the manager. He came up, took a look at my grandma and said he couldn't accept the check. At the time I didn't understand what was going on, I only found out what happened later on. I remember my mom just pushing the cart of groceries away and taking me and my grandma home. I asked her why we didn't get the groceries, and she said that sometimes people make bad judgments about people they don't even know.


Later my mom got a good job, Thank God. Her credit is very very good. I remember she took me with her to buy a new car. The salesman took one look at her name and neglected her. However when he ran her credit check he came back all smiles. We bought the car elsewhere.

That's the only way people like that might learn something.

because she'd wear a rebozo around her head and shoulders and the salesmen never saw what hit them.

lol

:toast:

I became aware of how ugly racism was when I was 13, and living in Florida. The school bus I was riding on to an all-white school had stopped at a stop sign and the white kids leaned out of the windows shouting "nigger!" at an old black man on the side of the road and spat at him. He did nothing other than turn his back to the kids while they laughed.

Being from California, and used to the casual, but not institutional or blatant, racism there I was still shocked that anyone could treat another human being with so much indignity. The most painful thing was that, even then, I realized that (at that time '50s) the old man couldn't do anything.

At that same school, my gray haired, bespectacled, "proper", teacher told the class that "we Southerners would rather die than let niggers in 'our' schools".

Those are moments I never forgot and still look upon with revulsion.

Riding on a bus in San Francisco with my grandmother 50 years ago. I noticed a black woman across from us and asked my grandmother about her.

She said, "They are just like us."

I think her response was probably unusual.

the area was dominated by White Protestants who mistrusted Catholic "foreigners". Catholic kids played with Catholic kids, Protestant kids shut us out. So my identity was formed as an outsider even though I'm white. You can't imagine how proud we all were of John Kennedy.

I do remember an incident that really shocked me when I must have been about 5 or 6. We had new neighbors from New Orleans. The little girl dropped a piece of candy on the ground, her brother told her not to eat it because a n*** might have touched it, then they both laughed. I knew that that was a very bad word and I was shocked that real people could say such things.

Seriously though.. I was about 12.. It was Charleston SC.. May 1961

We had flown MATS from Panama because my grandmother was gravely ill.

our plane dumped us in Charleston (that;s the way MATS operated in those days)..so we had to wait 2 days to get another hop to Kansas City.

With 2 days to kill, we went downtown (we were staying on-base)..

It was a swelteringly hot day and we stopped into a little diner to get a cold drink.. the waitress did not come and did not come, and I could not wait, so I left the table and headed for a drinking fountain at the back of the place..

The counter waitress literally chased after me, and grabbed me by my ponytail..then she dragged me back to the table and told my Mom..'Your young'un was about to drink from a colored fountain'..

I have never been back to Charleston..never wanted to:(

'59 or '60, I was about 6, Dad was stationed at Cape Canaveral. Mom and I were in the Sears store. I went off to get a drink and the next thing I knew, someone grabbed my arm; I was simultaneously being dragged and spanked as my mom came running. The woman who thought it was perfectly ok to wail on someone else's kid explained my sin had been to drink from the "Negro" fountain.

Those kinds of events twist one's mind as only a child's mind can twist them. For the longest time after that I thought white people had cooties or something because black people had special facilities just for them.

I still shop at Sears sometimes, but you can be damn sure I never go near the drinking fountain.

and white even though he is clearly not. When I told him he wasn't part black he was still insistent that he was and then it dawned on me that his cousins are mixed and since my Sister in Law is African American he assumed he was as well. This was when he was about 6 years old and he depicted himself as mixed in drawings at school for quite some time, my SIL and I got quite a laugh out of this for most of that year.

When my son was about the same age as you were, he came home from the neighbor's in tears. He said to me in tones of abject sadness, "Mama, I am not black!" Our nearest neighbors were black and he used to go over there and play every afternoon. Somebody had told a black 'in' joke and my son had laughed along with everybody else. One of the people there pointed out to him that he WASN'T black and therefore the joke was kind of about him. He was devestated.

My daughter's best friend since FOREVER is black. It was the sweetest thing when they were four or five and they would dress the same and have me put their hair in pigtails and then they would go places and tell people they were twins. In a way, it kind of broke my heart that some day they would figure out why people were looking at them funny. At the time, they really thought they looked just alike (my daughter takes after her father and has true blond hair and blue blue eyes).

where once girl seemed to take entirely after the white mother, and the other the black father. So it can happen.

I am going to see if I can Google that and show it to my daughter. She would like it. Thanks!

Cause I was born in September, my sister was born in September and school started in September. MAKES PERFECT LOGICAL sense to a 6 year old.

Interesting question though. I would expect most people of color in the U.S. to learn very early, and at home, of the risks, challenges, and blessings of being outside the preferred race.

kids of color living in Hawaii.

:rofl:

So, I called her a Hershey bar!

My father was a businessman that employed African Americans. I went to a church that had a large population of people from Lebanon and Syria. It wasn't until I went to public school that I encountered racism. Having not been taught anything racist by my folks, it seemed wierd. All this during the 50's and 60's.

to me about playing with an African-American kid.

It was the whole-- why do you play with him? Our parents say "they're different"

Very West Side Story-- "Stick to your own kind"

My mom told me that the other kids and their parents were wrong and to hang out with whoever you want to.

I grew up on military bases my whole life.When we moved to san angelo,I lived in a house for the first time.NO African-americans at all in our neighborhood.I remember my dad stiffening when I went to the movies with Tony,one of his friend's sons.He was,of course,black.I never noticed.I still don't,unless someone makes something out of it.

My Chilean mother and I got stranded at my grandmother's house during a vacation visit when Pearl Harbor happened. My American father had to go back to work in Chile (copper miner) especially for the war effort but we couldn't accompany him. Mother and I only spoke Spanish at the time. When I went to play with the neighborhood kids and spoke Spanish to them, they called me a dirty Jap. They didn't know the difference between English and Japanese. I know I didn't understand the words but that they were nasty. My grandmother told me months later what they had said once I learned English. Years later I would be called a dirty you know what even though I spoke English by then.

in being either white or someone of color --

I was only a bit over 6 years old and traveling with my beloved grandmother and we had boarded a bus in Florida -- we were New Yorkers.

A woman about the age of my grandmother got on the bus and there was some kind of a a "to-do" about her sitting in front of us and then she moved to the back of the bus.

My grandmother explained to me quietly what was happening --
and I couldn't imagine that these two women were any different in the love they brought to the world and those who loved and cherished them -- and yet some wanted to impose harsh and cruel differences in treatment!!!

It was also later on that trip that I saw the long lines of "darkies" chained together doing road work and what was happening there was also obvious to me.

In NY at that time, "blacks" were uptown and not very visible in our society.
I did begin to become much more aware of racist concepts and comments, however.

This was when there was institutional racism---segregated schools, segregated beaches, segregated fountains, segregated stores, etc. My family's white. I'm not sure of the exact incident, but I remember my mom talking about the prejudice against black people ("Negroes" back then). So I think that is when I became aware of differences in people. Also I became aware that there were Catholics (us), Jews, and Protestants. Protestants were the dominant group in Mississippi. We didn't appreciate having to say the Protestant version of the Our Father in school (public school). And I remember hearing that some school kids saying Kennedy was bad because he was a Catholic (he was running for President then).

to grow up in the areas w/ Jim Crow laws. I never realized that happened until I was in high school when we began studying and reading books about racism. First book I ever read about it was "Black Like Me" and later, Dick Gregory's "Nigger". It really radicalized me against racism.

Ack! I broke my arm!

we moved temporarily from the farm to an apartment in the city. I made friends with the neighborhood kids but they always asked odd questions about religion. I told them I was Presbyterian and they talked about their faith, which I found fascinating because it involved candles, etc. - much more interesting than just saying prayers at dinnertime.

They were having a special holiday and I asked if I could come inside to see the ceremony, but their parents became very angry. It really hurt my feelings. Suddenly our new neighbor friends were cold and rude to my sisters and I, we couldn't figure out what happened. They would chase us, call us names and jump out from corners when we walked down the sidewalk and knock us to the ground. It even spread to school, where one of my classmates in 2nd grade asked me at recess if I was a protestant. I still couldn't figure out what difference that made, but said "yeah, so what"?

From then on none of the other kids in class would play with us, it was just the two of us by ourselves on the playground. After a while, we were assigned to seats by ourselves in the back of the classroom. We still tried to play with the other kids, but they shut us out.

Pretty soon, the violence escalated. On the way home from school one afternoon, one of the boys in my class jumped out from an alley and beat the crap out of me. My mom was very upset and went to the school to complain. Things became very tense. Finally she said she was going to move us out of there as soon as possible. Both my sisters were attacked by the girl next door who left big, painful bites on their forearms. We were terrified, afraid to go outside our apartmentm, we cried and had nightmares.

A month later, my mom remarried (she was going through a divorce at the time) and we moved back out to the suburbs. The school out there looked the same and the kids looked the same, but no one ever asked you about your religion and no one beat you up.

I forgot about the terror at the bad school in the city after a couple of months.
Later in my teens, I happened to remember it and attributed it to "city" people being different. I asked my mom and she told me the truth: We were the only protestant kids in a neighborhood of Jewish people. We were being discriminated against because we weren't Jewish. I never held it against anyone except the people in that neighborhood. I later had many Jewish friends, roommates in college and was even engaged to a Jewish man in later years. But I never forgot how it felt to be a victim of discrimination.