When I grew up, there were very few points where I interacted with people of a different race, be it Black, Indian, Asian, or anything else that was out of the ordinary to me and my ‘mutt blood’.
I learned at an early age at school (about 2nd grade) that other races fascinated me. I met an asian girl and she taught me japanese words, and I thought she was the coolest person in the class. 5th Grade, my history class had one african american student, and I found him to be awesome. He was smart, and funny and though I wasn’t complete friends with him, I felt a little bit more culturally diverse for having him there (I was in fifth grade so this was a big step for a white kid with no previous experience with anyone of color).
My parents never seemed to talk about it, until I started getting on in my teenage years. My mother was forced to move to an almost Lower Class suburb, and almost all her neighbors were who she called ‘ghetto trash’ , ‘white trash’ , ‘blackies’ . I was about 14, and spent my first summer with her, going to a park for a camping program with tons of other kids from the same suburb. This was my first taste of ethnicity and it was fun.
When my mother came to pick me up one day, she saw a Milano boy calling me names, and didn’t know he was joking. She stepped out of her car, pulling me away from him, and sat me down in the car, windows rolled up, looking tense ad flustered.
“Why did you do that, we were joking!”
“Listen, if one of those Niggers calls you a queer one more time, you tell him to go fuck himself”
This was the first time I saw any kind of blatant racism from my mother, and frankly was a turning point for me. I realized I wasn’t like her, didn’t want to be like her, and had no problem with color. I discussed it with her in my later years, but she wouldn’t listen to my taks about stereotyping and attempting to be more trusting.
“You don’t understand” She said “I’ve grown up like this, I can’t change it.”
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