Post AkYb3IB8AzWfg4Al9c by mmezabet@craftgoblin.club
(DIR) More posts by mmezabet@craftgoblin.club
(DIR) Post #AkYYwjGCt8g9jdI0hM by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T12:31:05Z
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I have decided to become Black again. I've always been Black, but there *was* a first moment when I 'became.'I was 5. Robbie, my next door neighbor in our little suburb was 4 and we loved to play under the big pine tree on the boundary of our yards. There was a quiet space beneath the bows, like a little room carpeted with pine needles. "Yesterday was my birthday party." Said Robbie waving the plastic Masters of the Universe sword that was his favorite gift. 1/
(DIR) Post #AkYZJGHEoWZoVNW3l2 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T12:35:08Z
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"I didn't know." I said, disappointed I missed an opportunity to go to Toy-R-Us and pick a gift for Robbie. Disappointed I didn't get to have cake. "Why didn't I come?""My mom said we don't invite Black people." Said Robbie without malice. Both of us were too young to realize what any of this meant. Just more inscrutable adult rules, I can only remember this incident because of how my mom reacted when I told her about it later, casually, over lunch. 2/
(DIR) Post #AkYZe1e6PKZxCz6zZo by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T12:38:50Z
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"Well perhaps Robbie shouldn't come over anymore." Said my mom. She was angry. I didn't understand why. Robbie was my friend!I later learned that Robbie's mother and father had argued about this a great deal she was disgusted with having to live in our rather liberal integrated suburb. It's not what she expected him to provide. They had lived in an all white suburb before, but now they were in a place with so many "Blacks and Jews" 3/
(DIR) Post #AkYZuncdnfMMdcQVge by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T12:41:56Z
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Robbie's mother found herself on the outs with the parents in the neighborhood. And Robbie came to my 6th birthday and I went to his 5th. I remember he got me Aquafresh toothpaste which was my favorite gift (it's that toothpaste that is striped in 3 colors and every kid was totally hypnotized by the commercials. )Much to our parents dismay all of us piled into the power room and took turns tasting it and brushing our teeth. 4/
(DIR) Post #AkYZwpFciPoaGicuIq by wcbdata@vis.social
2024-08-02T12:42:10Z
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@futurebird JFC. As a white dude, I still feel sick to my stomach when I think of the things people (including me) said and did in my mostly-white, mostly-intolerant suburb when I was a kid, just because it's what the adults in our lives said and did. We didn't know. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for those years.
(DIR) Post #AkYa1LC5tTMYUr82fw by adriano@lile.cl
2024-08-02T12:43:05Z
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@futurebird ngl this image put a big smile on my face
(DIR) Post #AkYaJoRxrLOeReMNsW by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T12:46:25Z
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It was only much later that I thought back on that conversation under the pine tree. How strange it was. How matter of fact we both were. We both accepted that the adults must have good reasons for their choices even if they didn't seem to make any sense. I think about Robbie's mom now and then. Her ... "suffering" ... the ways she tried to "protect" her sons. I wonder if Robbie remembers?When did he become white?5/5
(DIR) Post #AkYaii8AUWym5MyNNo by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T12:50:58Z
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@adriano How do you tell 8 five and six year olds that they *can't* brush their teeth? I still remember Amanda climbing over the back fence to quickly run home and get her toothbrush. I felt like the queen of the world with the best toothpaste of course everyone had to try it... together. LMAO. All the houses were connected in the back with little paths the kids just went all over the place. It was normal to find my friends in my kitchen, or go into anyone's house.
(DIR) Post #AkYaoQ8QJRWY0foZvc by kbsez@mastodon.social
2024-08-02T12:50:13Z
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@futurebird I must admit this story brought at tear to my eye.... The older I get the more I just don't understand people like Robbie's mother--- but you can see a lot of hers at every trump rally.
(DIR) Post #AkYaqqhiV2smzZTslU by InkySchwartz@mastodon.social
2024-08-02T12:51:20Z
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@futurebird That's a good question...
(DIR) Post #AkYb3IB8AzWfg4Al9c by mmezabet@craftgoblin.club
2024-08-02T12:54:39Z
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@futurebird I think we're about the same age. Experiences like this make me understand why my mom chose to teach the "we don't see color" lesson -- not realizing, of course, that it actually started a whole different kind of problem. (Which has reversed our roles; I now try to teach her about erasure. She's taking the reframing well!)
(DIR) Post #AkYbBX90PySAPS6mHo by mansr@society.oftrolls.com
2024-08-02T12:56:08Z
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@futurebird How strange and terrible it must have been to slowly realise the implications of being black in America. I hope having had you as a friend helped Robbie grew up to be better than his mother.
(DIR) Post #AkYc2VkoJjzNRh3L96 by MichaelTBacon@social.coop
2024-08-02T13:05:37Z
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@futurebird I remember the first time I heard another kid use the n-word. They were in the standard three person jokes with some group selected to be the butt of the joke. I was at summer camp.I objected the first time I heard it, and the kid responded, "it's just the way the joke goes."To my shame, I repeated the joke several times, n-word and all, until a counselor heard it and thankfully shut it down hard.
(DIR) Post #AkYdynJNITSKeJZjoO by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T13:26:54Z
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@mansr It was strange but not terrible. But, I credit my parents, especially my mom. There are other ways to "Become Black" like volunteering at the Black History Museum bookstore or replacing the drywall in great-grandmother's old house, discovering all the mortise and tenon joints that formed the wall and this wild funny story about how a guy wouldn't sell great grandpa nails. But he outsmarted them. That's kind of what things like "Black History Month" are for.
(DIR) Post #AkYe3Q439mjBztc3Gq by rlstone4dems@mastodon.social
2024-08-02T13:27:12Z
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@futurebird myrmepropagandist: I’m sorry that you had to experience something like this as a child. I don’t have the words my friend… This is one of the saddest things I’ve read all week… Something tells me that your mom had some strong words for Robbie’s idiot, and ignorant mom.
(DIR) Post #AkYeA02kIi6xK08lsm by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T13:29:11Z
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@rlstone4dems I think it was the other white moms in the neighborhood that really did it. Probably something like no one coming to any of their kids houses anymore... though done with more "politeness" ... it was a very polite kind of environment but a lot was going on under the radar.
(DIR) Post #AkYeTW2ZYmvw3rMibQ by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T13:32:56Z
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@rlstone4dems There was also a class factor at play in all of this. Robbie's mom was an outsider in her own ways. She was an immigrant from Poland, came over very young with her parents I think. She was always a little overdressed and seemed very unhappy to me.Her husband wasn't as racist as her but I remember thinking how LAZY he was as a kid, it was bizarre to me how Robbie's mom waited on their dad and the boys like they were in a restaurant... My mom would NEVER.
(DIR) Post #AkYedb3vkANqX3o7zU by sewblue@sfba.social
2024-08-02T13:34:47Z
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@futurebird You just unlocked a core memory. I went to stay at my grandmother's for a week. She was living in a large condo complex at the time. I made a friend there, and my grandmother encouraged it. We were pin pals for years.It wasn't until I was older and understood race and saw photos that I realized my friend was black. My grandmother, an amazing woman, took delight in telling the racist white woman there to mind their own business. She absolutely delighted in pissing them off, hating prejudice of any form. We need more women like my grandmother and less women like your neighbor.
(DIR) Post #AkYenaUEjsE1dtsNQu by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T13:36:26Z
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@rlstone4dems I don't say all this to feel sorry for her, but I just think it's important that she wasn't simply an "evil racist lady" and everyone else was "good and not racist" ... it was very much more complex than that. And I've learned that a person can understand how, well, *gauche* it would be to have your five year old child blurt out that black people aren't allowed at their birthday but still be very much racist.
(DIR) Post #AkYet4PitidXuMNZbM by jack@social.jacklinke.com
2024-08-02T13:37:38Z
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@futurebird @mansr You can't tease a story about grandpa and then leave us with nothing. We're invested at this point! 😂
(DIR) Post #AkYfCC6aWe1zGSY2Qy by mansr@society.oftrolls.com
2024-08-02T13:41:03Z
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@futurebird Still, it's something no child (or parent) should have to go through.
(DIR) Post #AkYfOO7RgTv202lOjI by megmuttonhead@mas.to
2024-08-02T13:43:17Z
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@futurebird @rlstone4dems I’ve learned how white people (like me) really, really want racism to be about evil racist individuals. That makes it into a “them” problem, saving us from recognizing that it’s an “us” problem.😕I was in my 50s before I grasped that racism is a white-person problem that was very much my business—via structural racism at minimum.You were 5. This is why I need to listen to you when you analyze it. Expertise.
(DIR) Post #AkYftLNPvjvmTHzkY4 by tstrike78@mastodon.social
2024-08-02T13:48:46Z
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@futurebird It's the casual racisms that do the most damage, the ones that are just built into our everyday lives, but I also think the casual affirmations help the most.My kids had the hardest time wrapping their brains around racism and sexism when they discovered it, and it's partly because I'm such a #StarTrek nerd that Captain Sisko and Captain Janeway were just generally accepted as authority figures every single day of their childhoods. Small things stick.
(DIR) Post #AkYfvsuqCgxB4Pq9wW by queenofnewyork@newsie.social
2024-08-02T13:49:12Z
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@futurebird There was a kid in 6th grade who acted up like some of the other boys, and whose parents got mad when told about it because they thought he was being singled out for being Black. It took me decades to wonder if he really was acting up or just getting in trouble more because he was Black. I don’t remember enough to know. But at the time, I agreed with those saying the parents were just “playing the race card.” That’s when I turned white.
(DIR) Post #AkYg0nePCs24BlUqAa by econads@mendeddrum.org
2024-08-02T13:50:15Z
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@futurebird why dismay?
(DIR) Post #AkYgOX1efZfjZqgg8O by MylesRyden@social.vivaldi.net
2024-08-02T13:54:11Z
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@futurebird Thank you for sharing this. I have a somewhat similar experience (from the other side.) My parents, after having 4 kids of their own, adopted a mixed race Black child. We were definitely suburbanites and I saw many situations such as yours over the years.But one totally escaped my notice. For over 30 years my dad and his brother had cut off communications. Dad never said why and although the subject came up from time to time, it just never occurred to me.When their mother died, they finally started some communication then. It was then that my dad told me that the rift was over his brother's reaction to the adoption of my sister (which I can imagine as my uncle was an overall asshole anyway.) My sister was 6 months old when she was adopted. I still find it hard to fathom this kind of hatred, even though I can clearly see that it exists.
(DIR) Post #AkYhji4osRP1t2pWXQ by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T14:09:25Z
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@econads I think because it meat every kid running home to get their brush and it was just weird (good kind LOL)We had to debate and wear the adults down, but they had no arguments. Brushing your teeth is important and we'd all just eaten cake which has sugar in it. (Or they might have just been joshing us around. IDK)
(DIR) Post #AkYhz2lCG5m2NZxmU4 by econads@mendeddrum.org
2024-08-02T14:12:19Z
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@futurebird Sometimes if you tell a kid they can't do something they just want to do it harder. Masterful reverse psychology on the parent's part maybe. Super cute though.
(DIR) Post #AkYi96f4bne5NHthZY by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T14:14:10Z
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@jack @mansr I need to get my dad to tell it to me again. I don't remember all the details. Just something about how they bought the land mostly by mail then had problems when they showed up. Back then houses were in these kits and people built their own homes. Their kit arrived without nails. The local shop guy quoted an absurd price for the nails and fixings so great grandpap built it mostly without any after looking up wood joining at the library.
(DIR) Post #AkYio0pjBN0zAiO1GS by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-08-02T14:21:32Z
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It didn't really occur to me until just now, but the fact that Robbie already knew the reason why I wasn't invited probably means that he asked. That he wanted me to come and was told "no" (you need to become White) I wonder if his mom told him directly or if he listen more carefully to his parents than they suspected.
(DIR) Post #AkYjJGvlNnMu4e7CjY by KatLS@ohai.social
2024-08-02T14:27:09Z
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@futurebird the wounding is deep on both sides. 💔in my neighborhood little kids all played together until adolescence and talk of dating, girlfriends or boyfriends then the color lines appeared hard and fast among the adults. It still makes no sense.
(DIR) Post #AkYjQirTw0SKj9fJCa by davidnjoku@mastodon.world
2024-08-02T14:28:25Z
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@futurebird What a heartbreaking story.
(DIR) Post #AkYjiWeu2kN65qGqrw by rysiek@mstdn.social
2024-08-02T14:31:45Z
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@futurebird thank you for sharing. 💜
(DIR) Post #AkYkJTAdyURHzQjXH6 by VirginiaHolloway@urbanists.social
2024-08-02T14:38:24Z
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@futurebird Thank you for sharing that story. It’s terribly sad, but important for those of us who live in the blissful ignorance of privilege to hear. I also feel privileged that my parents were not the sort to ban any friend of mine from my birthday parties out of prejudice. It reminds me of a story a Jewish friend once told me of being about that same age and having a non-Jewish friend ask if he could see her horns.
(DIR) Post #AkYl4TFhUNvpqxViim by liaizon@social.wake.st
2024-08-02T14:46:06Z
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@futurebird thats a beautifully told story that totally made me cry at the end
(DIR) Post #AkYm4uEpFwJRVDsBHs by hi_cial@donphan.social
2024-08-02T14:58:12Z
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@futurebird its stuff like this that makes me want to fight for better worlds bc thats just so fucking sad for children. All that was wanted was birthday fun. Instead it became a real downer of a lesson... but totally unrelated thats extremely cute that your obsession at 5 was the stripey toothpaste & all the kids wanted to try it.
(DIR) Post #AkYmQuEzvUunskRZvU by sarae@ecoevo.social
2024-08-02T15:01:53Z
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@futurebird I think the only time I straight-up gave one of my kids a "she can't come over" like this was when my younger kid had a school friend and I met the mother -- at the school carnival, no less -- and she was wearing a sun dress so you could see the full-length tattoo sleeve portrait of Heinrich Himmler she had running down one arm
(DIR) Post #AkYqpcse0d4B5z1z8q by msbellows@c.im
2024-08-02T15:51:28Z
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@futurebird Thanks for this interesting thread, which has me wondering when I "became" white. My first grade school (Oakland, 1960s) was integrated, and I quickly figured out that I was the second smartest person in my class. The smartest was a Black girl named Anita. (For which I'm thankful as hell, bec. after that, I could never believe for one second that girls or PoC weren't as smart as boys/whites. It's yet another benefit of integrated education.) 1/
(DIR) Post #AkYqvoCOq7RNwADfbk by Cyrus@zirk.us
2024-08-02T15:52:35Z
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@futurebird @adriano When I was around 10 we lived in a neighborhood of West Indians, and the biggest culture shock piece to me was that kids and teens were always welcome to just walk into anyone’s homes. Maybe true for adults too, idk. There was always some kind of food on the counter in any kitchen, meant for any hungry kid that came by to visit.
(DIR) Post #AkYsYJp9o3nIylH6bA by Ardvaark@mastodon.world
2024-08-02T16:10:45Z
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@futurebird Thank you for sharing.
(DIR) Post #AkYsd5AHjiyixiQdzE by iinavpov@mastodon.online
2024-08-02T16:10:50Z
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@futurebirdThank you for this moving story. I think this is why I preferred the 90s idea of everybody being colour blind.The hope that fewer and fewer kids become black or white over time.Not the naivety that there's no such thing.
(DIR) Post #AkYsjVAjxFpLMNhcx6 by run_atalanta@pgh.social
2024-08-02T16:12:39Z
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@futurebird I remember the day I was told I was white. My HS drama club was "borrowing" a neighboring community's HS auditorium for a production while ours was being renovated. The area served by this HS was definitely very bluecollar/redneck white vs our home which was artistic/hippy white, but also with significant Jewish percentage.The borrowed HS was public, but the community very christian. 1/
(DIR) Post #AkYtjoXg2OV9OB8zWS by gneilyo@mastodon.online
2024-08-02T16:24:01Z
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@futurebird I remember wanting to try Aquafresh toothpaste!
(DIR) Post #AkYueepwnJ0znKnLFo by bleakfuture@techhub.social
2024-08-02T16:34:16Z
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@futurebird I choose to believe that Robbie eventually chose to marry a nice brown person who loves him very much and maybe his mom learned a lesson. Maybe.
(DIR) Post #AkYujwdu1KGwSxgM1A by ColesStreetPothole@weatherishappening.network
2024-08-02T16:35:11Z
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@futurebird Thanks for telling this story. 🥰 Kids are great. I wish they could stay kids longer. 🙂
(DIR) Post #AkYwr398RClqZYo49I by Jonricha@hoosier.social
2024-08-02T16:58:55Z
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@mansr @futurebird @jack As a guy who does some woodworking and stays the hell away from mortise and tenon joints because they require a skill level I will never acquire, I recognize that your great grandpa was bad ass level 15 out of 10.
(DIR) Post #AkYz4svTQvj6py8pKy by cxj@phpc.social
2024-08-02T17:23:20Z
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@futurebird Exactly!
(DIR) Post #AkZ0tbYPsh1ZgM6bDM by bruce@darkmoon.social
2024-08-02T17:44:10Z
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@futurebird I don't remember a time when I became "white." That's part of what privilege is: one exists as the default, and it isn't questioned. Everyone else is somehow other, but not us. And that's how members of a majority become blinded to the inequities of majority/minority relationships.
(DIR) Post #AkZ63qPjzCZuR7kWky by paulc@mstdn.social
2024-08-02T18:41:36Z
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@futurebird I was 60 when I found out that one of my Black classmates was able to live in my town only after his father sued their future landlord for racial discrimination. This would have been in the 1960s.I also heard stories from Jewish people who moved to Great Neck in the 1950s about the antisemitism they encountered. Someone whose family was the first to move into a Catholic neighborhood was told by neighbors that they thought Jews would push down properly values.
(DIR) Post #AkZ6DxpHHeYeJtWH6u by paulc@mstdn.social
2024-08-02T18:43:56Z
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@futurebird @adriano This is a great story. I remember that toothpaste and other one that was at least 2 colors. And 5 and 6 year olds getting excited about brushing teeth is wild (in a good way).
(DIR) Post #AkZ6sZwmyAiY8MOpP6 by pamela6591@mastodon.social
2024-08-02T18:50:57Z
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@futurebird I cannot speak for Robbie, but I can tell you I did not know I was white until I was 42.And I apologize for that. I should probably have known it sooner.
(DIR) Post #AkZEkuEgS6V8NHcceu by justafrog@mstdn.social
2024-08-02T20:19:09Z
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@futurebird Usually parents who talk about slightly different people as the source of all evil aren't very quiet about it at home, when they think it's safe.Then their kids let it slip and everyone knows what they're really like.
(DIR) Post #AkZGqd2jUGx2hKt9BA by jonathanpeterson@hachyderm.io
2024-08-02T20:42:56Z
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@futurebird Interesting question. I don't know when I became white. I think as a white southerner, even growing up with civil rights activist parents, in a public university town, going to integrated public schools and integrated churches, I didn't become "white" for the same reason a fish doesn't know what water is. Being white is the default - easy to notice when you are discriminated AGAINST. The benefits of privilege are harder to see when they are everywhere
(DIR) Post #AkZWZP0vzZWhX0r4zo by EverydayMoggie@sfba.social
2024-08-02T23:39:10Z
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What a heartbreaking story. I'm sure there are thousands of these stories, too. Have you ever thought about collecting them into a book, or a website, or something? @futurebird
(DIR) Post #AkaiQU6B6yupIpmXHk by Icenijay@mas.to
2024-08-03T13:20:49Z
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@futurebird good post. I became white at the age of 8 after growing up around parents and peers who knew no different. Sadly it took me until my teens to realise that there are only shades of grey.What's more sad is that there are still some around me who cannot see grey.#wereallthesame
(DIR) Post #AkcyeWAKD8QTLlM3s0 by hestes@hcommons.social
2024-08-04T15:37:56Z
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@futurebird I remember chanting “eenie meenie miney moe” in my father’s hearing, and he quietly told me, “don’t say [n-word], say “tiger,” when I was … maybe 6? 8? But I “became white” several years later, when I started reading the Boston Globe (we lived in NH), and read an article about when the city bused Black kids to white neighborhoods, and white protestors were so violent the National Guard had to be called. I knew about the Civil Rights Act and Jim Crow laws, but despite my extended family being multi-racial, I somehow had the idea that racism was in the past. But suddenly I learned different.