Quote:
Originally Posted by dobbles
I have something I want to see what Acey and Crown think of and if its consistent with their lived experiences...
Growing up in the small town midwest as I did, there usually was a small amount of minorities in communities. You would often have that stereotypical 1 or 2 black families that allowed the community to think they had diversity and weren't racist. However, the one thing about those minority families, is they had to lead a very 'white' life. They had to keep quiet, keep their head down, not cause trouble, stay in line with cultural norms, etc.
Then what you would see in towns that actually ended up with a large influx of minorities was pretty severe racism. I am familiar with a few towns that had meat processing plants that ended up bringing in large amounts of minorities as cheaper labor. Those communities would turn ugly when they had to deal with minorities actually having their own culture and way of life.
This is all anecdotal of course, but it just seems like we have a large portion of society that thinks they are cool with minorities because they know a few but those few have always had to tiptoe through life to stay off the radar.
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My situation is different than Crown's in that I was not the first in my family to go to college. I am blessed out of this world in that my dad is a medical doctor and my mom a professor. To that end, it was important that my brother and I behave ourselves so as to not compromise their careers... though that's not really race specific. It's maybe the case that us misbehaving would be more detrimental to their careers than it would be for white kids doing the same thing, but I have no evidence of that nor did I test out the theory.
I went to high school in Lethbridge and in grade 11 we had maybe 4 black people out of 1,400... so my brother and I were half the contingent. A girl moved away and then he graduated leaving 2 of us for my grade 12 year. In grade 12 I had a teacher who was just blatantly racist and would kick me out of class for no reason, a computer class. A few times she just said, "I don't want to deal with you today... get out." I was happy to have a free period, but then other kids went and complained to counselors. Ended up in a meeting with principals, her, a few school board people, and my mom, while the teacher tearfully somehow tried to justify her actions. She thought I was mounting a mutiny against her by trying to get the other kids to turn on her. Given my spotty attendance in every other class, it was easy to explain that I would have had no motive to do that.
My mom was the head of the history department of U of L and my vice-principal's son was in her class and said she was the best prof he's ever had, so school admin was on my side from the start. It was obvious to everyone that she was racially biased against me, but as she never explicitly said anything racist nothing came of it. I ended up losing because they switched my timetable a bit so I could be in a different computer class, but it pulled me out of my Math 30 class with all my friends.
It's weird sometimes because stories like this and the one about being barred from seeing a girl by her father... they seem abhorrent, but I have to realize that a disproportionate number of minorities do not come from upper middle class scenarios as I did and have nobody to swoop in and whoop ass whenever it's necessary.