When did you identify with your race?

[deoridhe]

I recently read a post in which a woman from the midwest in the US asked an entire community: "What's it like to be black?" The cries of horror, lectures, and congratulations for seeking out different information still ringing in my ears, I was struck with another question - when had I become white?

So now I put this to you all, my friends list - when did you become identified with a color/shade on the color spectrum and what is it like being identified with that color?

What's it like to be red, yellow, black, or white?

Comments

[chibidrunksanzo.livejournal.com]

I think the defining moment of me realizing, "Hrm, I'm a rich white kid..." was when I went to go see They Might Be Giants live at The 9:30 Club in DC. I went with four other white friends, only one of whom was actually comfortable. We got there early and ate at a little diner, then went looking for an ATM machine. As we walked into CVS we passed a man who looked at us and said half to himself, "Well look at that, four little white kids." Hoo boy did I feel out of place until we got to the club.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

Huh. That's similar to my second experience; I realized I was "white" because my friend's friends didn't like me - seemingly because of that, since they refused to talk to me.

[iraenicole.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I just identify myself with being gay.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

D'you think that's because you stand out more from your environment because of that, or because it's more important to you?

[iraenicole.livejournal.com]

Both.

[queenmadeline.livejournal.com]

I'm caucasian, and I think this is the best race. I am proud of my race.

As a teenager, I used to think race didn't matter and there was no truth to stereotypes. As I grow older, I'm seeing there really are major differences in the races, and that stereotypes are often justified.

For example, at my work we have a soda dispenser with strawberry soda. 9 times out of 10, when somebody orders the strawberry soda they will be black.

Not to say that other races are inferior, just that they are different.

I don't get a major sense of identity out of what race I am though, I don't even think about it unless soemeone brings it up.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

So, uh, people who drink strawberry soda are inferior to people who don't for some reason?

I'm not following your reasoning, here. It sounds a lot more like trying to reassure yourself you're superior instead of recognizing your own unimportance through picking an arbitrary characteristic to point at and say, "See? Me better!"

[queenmadeline.livejournal.com]

I see your reading comprehension is a little off for today.

I said:

"Not to say that other races are inferior, just that they are different."

The point was that races are different, not inferior/superior.

I already said I don't get much identity from being white, only a slight sense of pride which has nothing to do with feeling superior. I just like being white.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

Ur, so people who drink strawberry soda are intrinsically different from those who don't, then? The basic confusion remains.

[queenmadeline.livejournal.com]

My point was races are different and stereotypes are often justified. The reason I brought up the strawberry soda thing was because it is just one example of a racial stereotype that I know is justified. That is that black people love strawberry and watermelon things, much more so than other races.

So yes different, but not inferior/superior.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

So... "black" people like strawberries? Does that mean my roommate shingan is "black," 'cause she's ALL about the strawberries. It's about the only fruit she eats!

[queenmadeline.livejournal.com]

No, there are people of all races that like strawberries. However, pretty much ALL black people LOVE them. They also love watermelon and fried chicken. These are foods that if you're having a black person over for dinner you can't go wrong with.

I have seen this with my own eyes. I wish you could come with me to work one day so you could see how justified this is. You would hear black person after black person ordering strawberry soda, and you would see that hardly any white or mexican people order it. When black people walk in the door, I preemptively make some strawberry sodas because there's such a good chance that's what they're going to order.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

So, if I had a friend who liked sushi who happened to be "black" I should serve them chicken instead because they must like chicken? And have strawberries for dessert?

Your experiences are more important than dealing with people as individuals?

[fireba11.livejournal.com]

Pardon my butting-in, but... most of my black friends (and even dark-skinned people I've observed with whom I'm not acquainted) seem to have a preference for various fruit-flavored sodas. Especially grape soda. The same stereotype seems to hold true with fried chicken, watermelon, menthol cigarettes, and any number of other cultural identifiers that tend to skew more towards one community than another.

Reasons why? Who knows. I've never cared enough to delve into it and find out if there's something there, or if it's all just happenstance. More on this in another post...

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

The problem is, you also said this:

I'm caucasian, and I think this is the best race.

If you think it's the "best" race, that does imply that you think other races are inferior. But then you said that's not what you said. I don't think this is something you can have both ways.

[queenmadeline.livejournal.com]

Eh, whatever. I'm sick of arguing about this subject.

[chibidrunksanzo.livejournal.com]

Oh! I forgot my other anecdote! So when I work at home I do temp work. Last winter/spring I got a temp job at the United Negro College Fund. I was amused. Nobody that I interacted with cared that I was white (I'd say the people working there came to about 60% Africans, 40% Asians. Although I did see one other white woman around). On my second day, though, elevator doors open and there's a big black guy standing there. He just looks at me with this baffled expression and asks, "Fourth floor?" (the entire fourth floor was UNCF) I reply cheerfully, "Yep!" Still puzzled, he asks, "You're getting off on the fourth floor?" I grin and say, "Uh-huh!" and step off the elevator as he steps on. I think he was still looking at me baffled when the doors closed.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

*snickers* That is funny.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

My first experience with race was coloring a playground of children in first or second grade. Someone must have mentioned white people and black people to me before that, but I obviously didn't understand it, because I was coloring one of the kids with my black crayon because I wanted all kinds of kids to play together. My teacher caught me before I started to color another kid with the white crayon. Heh.

I got a huge lecture and my picture was taken away, and for a long time I thought I'd been bad, though I didn't understand why. Poor Miss Maple. Of course, in college I was looking through one of my anthro books and ran across a picture of a man in Africa - oh I'm blanking on the tribe, but one of the ones around the Sahara - and he was black (blackberry, as my HS French teacher would say), and my first thought was, "Ha! There are SO black people, Miss Maple!" Never let it be said I can let an old wrong go forgotten. *sweatdrop*

That was the same class with the round table of students who didn't learn with the rest of us. I didn't realize until I was thinking about race some fifteen years later that they were probably there because their skin color was different. I just remembering wanting to know if it was ok for me to talk to them, and one time when I smiled at one of them and he just sort of looked away...

They always seemed so sad, but I didn't know if I could help so I didn't do anything. I feel vaguely bad for that sometimes, and wonder if they thought I was staring for some other reason and wished I would go away.

I rarely think of myself as "white" except around people who seem to treat me as if I'm "white," though. Like, in High School my nicknames were Vanilla Milkshake and Wonder bread (white, light, and full of hot air!) and I always felt inferior to my friends because of how rich and vivid their cultures and histories were. That really pushed me into exploring my heritage, and I do find a certain amount of pride in my Danish, German, Scotts-Welch and Scotts-Irish heritage. I have some of my clan tartan, and I covet the painting of the rulers of Denmark. I'm not sure any of this gives me much on the whole, though, in the context of how much pain people have suffered due to peopl who look a lot like me.

I honestly don't know if I'm racist or not. I'm not even sure what that means, in this age of people hiding their true feelings under a layer of PCness. I try very hard to be friends with people because I like them, and not due to any physical characteristics, but my circle of offline friends is somewhat disturbingly uniform in hue and that bugs me in a vague way in the back of my head.

[fireba11.livejournal.com]

Racism is best defined, in my book at least, as seeing the world through one's skin color. Most of us do this all the time, every day, and there's really nothing wrong with it. We do experience the world through our outward appearances -- race, sex, economic strata, and so on. While our skin tones may not be too far apart, you'll always be looked-at differently than I due to our outward appearances. Again, nothing wrong with that in and of itself. Discrimination -- that is, ability to tell one from another -- is not a bad thing.

Where it goes wrong is when people start taking that a little seriously. Believing that one's race is somehow "better" than another, believing that because someone's male or female or from another country (or, in America, even another state) makes them fundamentally less of a person, shit gets all whacked.

By all outward appearances, I'm a white Jewish boy from the suburbs. But, culturally, I've never really identified myself as "white." I avoid check-boxes on forms like that wherever possible. Don't look at my skin color; look a little deeper. If you're lucky, you might just see me. Don't look at the fact that I'm white and male and think that I'm educated and somehow privileged. Don't assume that my skin tells my story; it doesn't. I don't live in White America, but I visit it on occasion. It's just not my home turf.

By that token (no pun intended), I more/less tend to ignore race from one day to the next. I keep having to refer to George Carlin's excellent monologue from 1990 or so, wherein he showed just how the ruling class is able to use race, sex, sexuality, economics, or insert-social-issue-here in order to keep the working classes arguing among themselves and keep their eyes off of where all the fucking money is flowing -- straight to the top. Simple theory, happens to work.

The more we spend time arguing about what makes us different, the less time we have to work together taking this country back. Who knows, maybe we just haven't lost enough of it yet to care...

Anyway, that's all for now; see you at the next pit stop.

[learan.livejournal.com]

I'm blue, abudee abudah.

(But, in all seriousness - I remember being fed somewhat racist opinions as a child and never understanding them. As I've gotten older, I have noticed differences in the way things are perceived and handled by different races, but I am pretty sure that it has little to do with the actual color of their skin but just how they are raised to act as a result of their hue at birth.
I think the difference between races is that society has eyes, sees a difference, and beats it into children (through tradition and opinion) that the physical matters so much.)

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

*shunsOMG* Mama always told me blue people were boys and boys have cooties.

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

This is a weird question for me, because on my mother's side of the family, the nationality rather than skin color is what is identified with. "Polish" is a very big part of who they are and that has somewhat affected how I view issues of race and ethnicity.

My own pet peeve on the subject is when, in the name of "diversity", there's an Asian girl, a Hispanic girl, a black girl, and a very blonde, blue-eyed white girl. I have medium-brown hair and green eyes - what does that make me? (In fact, for much of my childhood, I assumed that my eyes - which actually are my best feature by far - made me ugly because "pretty girls in books" almost always have blue eyes, and the few that don't have brown eyes.) I remember thinking back to that feeling when I read an article about how nonwhite children are reluctant to play with non-white dolls and act as if the white dolls are somehow "better". The dolls I remember were usually blonde and blue-eyed (or sometimes black-haired and blue-eyed, or rarely brown-haired and brown-eyed), and it did - in a very subtle way - make me feel like I was un-pretty. I know it's not quite the same magnitude as being another race, but I think that gave me some empathy.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

Y'know, that there's an interesting point. Being one of the blue eyed, *sob* brown haired (you saw it here first, folks) girls, my coloring was always sort of default. It never occured to me how subtly that could hit.

Any ideas on a solution? To be honest, the check-mark diversity schtick always rather pissed me off because the "diverse" figures were almost always secondary characters, not the leaders - like a girl would be included, but just one and she was never in charge.

I'd rather see a wider variety than some sort of cookie cutter "diverse" set.

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's just the appearance, though (although it certainly doesn't help)...part of my problem is with the idea that "white" is a single, monolithic culture, when it's just not. And unfortunately, the few times that a particular subgroup of "white" is singled out, it's either for misunderstood romanticism (St Patrick's Day, 'nuff said) or for mockery ("dumb Polack" jokes, assumptions that Italians all eat lots of pasta and have ties to the Mafia, etc ad nauseam). The "traditional canon" emphasizes Western Europe - I understand that other continents are inappropriately ignored, but so are Northern and Eastern Europe, damn it.

And also unfortunately, those who embrace the idea of us pale-skinned folks connecting with our own ancestry (whatever it might be) are too easily confused with racist nutjobs - this is also known as I should NOT get the KKK's web page in a google search on "Odin."

But to me, embracing other cultures needs to mean embracing "white" cultures and cultural histories other than the classical Greco-Roman traditions and their descendants, as well as welcoming "nonwhite" cultures.

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

I am me.

Everybody else is not.

That's the only way it's ever been.

[r0n1n.livejournal.com]

Wow, man, that's...like, really, really deep. You're so tortured and mysterious. Like...wow. That's intense. You want to come over to my house and listen to Nickelback albums with me?

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

You know, pot, pointing out other dish's blackness usually highlights your own.

[r0n1n.livejournal.com]

I believe the strained metaphor you groping for was "kettle", not "dish".

See, I sort of take issue with proclamations like "That's the only way it's ever been." Excuse me? What, are you an orphan? Were you raised by fucking wolves? What the shit does that even mean? Did you get picked on a lot in school? Were you ostracized? Did people call you a "fag" and beat you up? Did you not date? Have you always felt alone? Isolated? Like it's you against the world?

Because guess what, dude, if that's all you got, that ain't much. Misanthropic, isolated teenagers are twelve for ten cents. However, I've never claimed to be some special and unique snowflake, nor have I ever japed that I'm the only one who could understand my pain or empathize with some of the horseshit I've lived through.

Why not just hang up a sign around your neck that says "I am the Enigma!! No one understands me!! PLEASE FUCK ME!!"?

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

I believe the strained metaphor you groping for was "kettle", not "dish".

No, actually, but thanks for the object lesson on cliches.

[r0n1n.livejournal.com]

I have SO many dots in my Burn Bridge skill, it's amazing.

And it's "abject". ^_~ Not to be a grammar nazi.

[plazmah.livejournal.com]

My background is Indian and ever since I was in grade 2/3 I realized that I was NOT part of the societal majority. I grew up in Newfoundland and I remember getting on the schoolbus the weekend after Easter. I sat next to a girl who (back then) seemed much older than I was. She asked me if I had gone to church for Easter, to which I explained I was Hindu and didn't go to church. She got all indignant and tried to explain to me that it didn't matter where I came from... once you moved to Canada you had to convert to Christianity. I knew it wasn't true, but her vehemence bothered me a lot. I never sat next to her again.

I was first identified by colour when I moved to my new school in Ontario. A lot of the boys were mildly racist and would tell me to go back to Pakistan. To which I would shout back "I was born in England you idiots!"

[crysiana.livejournal.com]

It's funny...I'm one of the people who was made aware I was white when the Hispanic kids picked on me for it. I don't really identify myself as anything, usually, though if pressed I'll go for "mostly-Irish."

One of my problems with life the universe and everything is that I know about myself that I am uncomfortable with black people, though I do not know why this is so. My parents are not biased against them at all that I can tell, so I'm kind of mystified as to where it came from, but I don't act on my discomfort at all. I think it would help if I knew where it came from, but I've just...never been sure.

[eljuno.livejournal.com]

...I find it somewhat ironic that your comment and mine ended up right next to each other. *Facepalm*

[crysiana.livejournal.com]

Why hello, my orange-wearing nemesis.

Yes. Very ironic. ^^;

[eljuno.livejournal.com]

I just want you to know that thinking about this post has lead me to a little realisation that I'll go into in a second.

Anyway. My first realisation about myself was a giant lot of 'not' and it was related to ethnicity and religion more than anything else. I was NOT: Irish, Italian, Catholic or Jewish, while just about everyone around me was one or more of the preceeding. (My heritage is, in more or less equal parts, the following: Scottish/Northern British and Cherokee. There's a hint of Blackfoot in there for spice, and probably more than a touch of Scandanavian...as my brother put it when writing a report 'You know how the Vikings used to drag off women? THOSE WERE OUR WOMEN.') For me, this didn't mean much except that I was different, and I'd already known that, thanks. This was probably...oh, before I went to school, I figure. Maybe Kindergarten as a major factor, because of St Patrick's Day and a little quirk my mother had (see end note). I know I knew I was, as I put it back then, 'half Indian' by the first Thanksgiving thing we had in school (mostly because I got tapped to play an Indian despite being blond and blue-eyed because I was and because I actually knew a few words. Completely wrong language, however, which means that there are probably STILL kids from the Fisher Elementary School Kindergarten class of '88 who think that the Pilgrims were greeted with 'Osiyo'.) and there are stories about me when I was little (let's just say they're along the lines of my father thinking the 'Colored' water fountain gave blue water)

The little realisation I'd referred to in the beginning comes up here, though, because I'm pretty certain that my mother is actually racist in an anti-Irish sense. (She doesn't like Catholics, as a rule, she tends to be sneering, and she dressed us in orange every St Patrick's Day, which at first, when I remembered, I was a little snickery about, but after a second I went 'WAIT.' Especially because the Troubles in Northern Ireland is actually a big deal around Boston...see previous statement about the only things most people were. And this was in the late 80's and early 90's, when the Peace Process was still a twinkle in most people's eyes) I'm actually not sure how this might have effected things, but it says something about the fact that my conception of myself STILL has a major factor of 'Not!Irish'.

[bibliotech.livejournal.com]

I think...when I was around 4, and actually meeting white people for the first time, I realised, "Hey, white people: They're not just for television anymore!" And I've grown up in an extended family that wasn't fond of white people (even though some of our relatives where various types of white--i.e., not black, asian or mexican (that's how they defined it, not me) and I know that I still have preconceived notions about white people in general (even though most of my friends are white, my husband is, etc.) that I don't know if I'll ever be able to shake. Nine times out of ten, if I walk into a room, and everyone in it is white, I will turn around and walk out, because my first response is, "Oh, shit, they're all going to kick my black ass into next week."

And I know I'm a product of my environment. That doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean I shouldn't not feel this way, but...agh. I don't think I am a racist, but I don't think I'll ever feel 'safe' when I'm the only minority in the room.

*uses the obligatory LOOK I AM COLOURED icon*

Oh, and it's never going to be okay for white people to say 'nigga'. I know it's hypocritical, even though I don't believe in using it--but all of them need to stop asking, because I will cheerfully join in on kicking the ass of any white person that uses it. See? How is that logical of me? But latinos/latinas can use it, though. Don't ask me why, that's just the rules, I didn't make them. If I had my way, no one would be using it. It's stupid.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

"Hey, white people: They're not just for television anymore!"

Dude, coolest revelation evah.

Have you ever done the thing where you're doing somehting and you come up with, like, the perfect fade from that to some related thing that would happen, damnit if you were on TV? I did when I was a kid and was rather disappointed when time continued on directly instead of fading to that evening...

[bibliotech.livejournal.com]

I did when I was a kid and was rather disappointed when time continued on directly instead of fading to that evening...

Oh, good. It wasn't just me, then. Although, since it's you, too, that doesn't make it any saner...

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

Hey, I resemble that remark!

[amdayen.livejournal.com]

As weird as this sounds, for years and years I had no idea there was a thing such as racism. I grew up in Kansas, but next to a very busy fort, and so there were people from aaaaaaall over the world coming in and out and I got to meet all sorts of different people. I grew up expecting people to look different, and so I always based my judgements on who the people were and not what they looked like.

When I finally learned was racism and such was, I was really, really confused. I just couldn't understand why people thought like that. I thought it was rather rediculous. I understand it's out there, I just didn't realize it was such a big issue until I visited places other than where I grew up.

Boy, was that frustrating. Even now I get annoyed when people make even jokes regarding race or being oppressed by some person or the differences between them and not the individuals. In my head somewhere there's a voice screaming "IT'S NOT THAT IMPORTANT."

Unfortunately, I learned what it was like to be moderately-well-off white in a world that was not like my hometown. Certain people don't want to associate with you because they think you'll have nothing in common. >:/ It's rather frustrating, because if they don't talk to me, than how would I know?

Looking at it, I admit that a majority of my friends have and are caucasian like myself. But I have and still have black, mexican, asian, etc friends as well. And it's because of who they are and not what they look like. Gotta thank my upbringing for that. :3

[ginalin.livejournal.com]

Interesting question for me, because though I'm an American born person of European descent(I'm mostly Irish and German, a blue-eyed strawberry blond) a lot of my childhood was spent around Asians, Hispanics and Blacks.
My dad was in the service and we were sent to the Philippines. A lot of the families living around us on the base were Black and Hispanic families.
So, I grew up in this weird situation(for a white American) where I was the minority. I think I had one white friend growing up. I was raised in part by a Chinese/Philippino housekeeper. I really thought she was family as a small child, I never saw her as different from anyone else I cared about.

My childhood gave me a peculiar case of color blindness in many ways. I remember when I was about 9 and discovered that some people actually HATE each other because they're a different race. I was stunned. Almost all my childhood best friends were Asian or Black. I ate at their houses, had pajama parties and shared their beds, and never even gave it a thought that we were "different".
It was such a shock to me in particular that some white people felt they were superior to people of color. I didn't know about being afraid of or hating people who were different. I still cannot relate at all to those kinds of ideas. It's very outside my personal experience.
I only felt "white" when I was much older, a teenager, and even then, it was because other people made that distinction for me.(I remember one funny incident in school where a black girl referred to me as "that white girl" and I almost looked around to see who she was talking about. It took me a minute to realize it was me!) I can't ever consciously thinking when I'm dealing with other people, "I'm white." It usually comes from the other person if at all.
Growing up the way I did does seem to have had an impact on my esthetics, though. I tend to find non-white people more attractive. Most of the people I've dated are darker than I am, usually Black, Amerindian, Asian or Mediterannean types. My husband has Black and Amerindian ancestry.

[animeg.livejournal.com]

My earliest member of learning people were different actually was religion, rather than race. Growing up, we had a number of different housekeepers (all from Jamaica, I believe, and dark-skinned) who had their own room in the house and generally took care of my sisters and me. I never would have considered any difference, except that I knew that came from somewhere else (and spoke with an accent).

It wasn't until... around the time I was maybe 7-8 when, out of curiosity, I'd asked one housekeeper did with her head under the blanket at night. She showed me (and I think one of my sisters.) how she knelt at the foot of the bed under the blankets that draped there and would pray.
When my mother found us, she was furious. Again, I can't really remember all of the details, but I think she'd accused the woman of trying to teach us her religion.

I did notice one other difference regarding people's skin tones when I was young. Darker skin tended to be generally softer (sometimes a little greasier). I think that has to do with the oils in the skin.

Looking back, the schools I'd gone to were majority white/caucasian/WASP-ish (heheheheheheh. :) Didn't ever really matter to me. (I still remember an newly transferred girl teaching me how to write her name in Chinese.)

Later in life, when I really started to understand how much racism seems to be around (and I tend to be pretty dense/naive about things), the more I tried to watch my behaviour to NOT be so. I don't know if I just look too obvious sometimes, and most of my friends are white.

I don't know. I really want to believe that "peoples is peoples". ^_^

[crantz.livejournal.com]

I had this huge reply and then I deleted all of it.

Anyway.


I grew up with almost no exposure to any race other than white and native. My best friend since age two is asian/czech, my other best friend is native/white, my girlfriend is all german, and I'm not gonna get into my own mix. My class sort of looked like one of those tv shows, there was a black girl, a black guy, a asian guy, a jewish girl and a baha'i guy. Everyone else except for a few mixes was all white and various flavours of christian. Anyway, everyone acted exactly the same. My opinions formed from that.

I've never really understood that there is a difference beyond visual and I like it when people don't try to show me, because it never ends well. THE END.


I like cookies.

[deoridhe.livejournal.com]

I opened a My Little Pony salon last night ad did the hair of, like, ten ponies. They're in boxes on the wall going up my staircase. I'll take pictures. ^_^ A couple 'dos suck, but most of them are cool.

[crantz.livejournal.com]

rock on.

[r0n1n.livejournal.com]

Race was never an issue for me growing up. I grew up in an area with a fairly liberal mix of european, asian, hispanic and african families, and while the area was clearly predominantly white (northern California), my family had a lot of friends, and they ran the gamut of colors and proclivities and nations of origin.
It wasn't until I got to high school and was exposed to the liberal-PC mindset that the white man is the devil and responsible for all the world's ills that the matter of race even became an issue for me. Thankfully by then I was deep enough into punk rock that such barbs were pretty much lost on me (NOFX's Don't Call Me White and Minor Threat's Guilty of Being White were planted firmly in my mind by then) and I had studied enough history to know that nobody's hands were clean. I was also a big enough jerk to not shed a tear over every conquered peoples or feel responsible for every dead non-white.

Gender was another matter. I never had male guilt, either, but growing up, the impetus to have male guilt was far stronger than that for white guilt. Men, I was lead to believe from early on, were nasty, brutish, thuggish creatures who were abusive to women and raped the world. That had a strong affect on me when I was young, and apparently it worked on a lot of guys my age; most every guy in my town that wasn't a redneck thug was a pasty, poetry-writing, hypersensitive girl-with-a-penis.
Being the utter fucking dork that I was, I opted for another route. I embraced the idea of chivalry -- the kind that only exists in fairy tales -- and tried to become one of those strong, noble men that grow up to be charming princes.
Clearly, I have lost my way somewhere along (perhaps not being charming or a prince has stymied me), but I think I have found an optimum equilibrium between brainless jock thug moron and hypersensitive poetry-writing well-groomed metrosexual poofter.
And for the record, I think women are fucking awesome, but I still wake up every goddamned day and exalt in joy at the fact that I'm a goddamned man.

All that aside, none of those things were my first taste of "Gee, I'm nothing like you people". That happened when I was quite, quite young, and had everything to do with the workings of my mind, and nothing to do with race, gender, sexual orientation or class. Although I was, for the record, an angry, angry, poor, poor, young man.

[antis0cialloser.livejournal.com]

My family grew up in the South, as southern baptists (I know, your thinking "Wow, and here comes the n-word and nooses"). But my great grandma, miss Lillian in a time and place of racism and segregation always told my Mom and Grandma "There's no color, just people". And that's what I grew up with. Until I was about 14 or 15 I was naive to the whole color issue. My stepdad was black. Wow, was I in for a shocker. I just remember thinking "Wait, why? I thought it was over? It's over... why are people still talking about racism?" Because in my mind, the whole entire thing was done with.
Oh it drives me nuts when people stereotype. Strawberry soda? How about all white people listening to country music and being unable to dance. If your going to believe in a stereotype, then believe in all of them, like a black man's endowment... poor poor white guys and their g/f's. Lol.