Were you raised around people who had racist views?

[bleedingheart]

I was raised in an eastern European family and I can honestly say that I probably heard every racist slur you can possibly imagine uttered by the older members of my family (parents, grandparents).. Interestingly...my family (extended as well as immediate) are 90% Democratic voters.

Growing up in that environment I didn't realize how whacked it was until I went to college. However over time...many of the older folks changed their tunes as their children and grandchildren married Jews, Protestants, African Americans, English, Latino...etc.. individuals. So to a great degree the "melting pot" of this country does work to help purge racism...but unfortunately that alone does not eliminate it.

[JohnKleeb]

1. Not really but I too come from an eastern european family

on edit, no but as I said I too am eastern european and Ive heard it from some of the older oens.

[bleedingheart]

4. my dad had very particular views regarding people

and most of his "racist" views were formulated based on his interactions with specific people. For instance, he absolutely hated Italians and it was due in part to the fact that two of his sisters married Italian fellows that he felt didn't treat them well...so he ended up labeling all Italians based on that interaction which seems silly to me but it was the way he was...

[JohnKleeb]

11. that sounds a lot like my mom's dad

but I think he has a problem with the Italians for taking Triste I believe its called, its Slovenia's not Italy's, grr heh ethnic fighting but he could work with people of all backgrounds and he can not stand the republican party's elitism.

[bleedingheart]

13. hee hee...I have heard the Trieste argument ....

My dad was Croatian...and it is Croatia and Italy who fought over it and today it is in the possession of the Croats...

...then there is the hatred between the Serbs and the Croats...funny the Europeans imported their hatred of other Europeans.....

edit:..the Slovenes and Croats share possession of Trieste...looked it up on google...

[hnsez]

35. Mother was in Hitler Youth, Father hated blacks

So I married one!!!

and our children are a beautiful golden-brown

[ohio_liberal]

2. Yes....

And sadly nothing has changed. Most of my relatives let loose now with a racist comment and then say something stupid like "..but you know I'm not racist".

[jeffrey_X]

3. Yes....

Grew up in small-town Indiana. It wasn't so much hateful racism (in most cases) as it was inherited prejudice, ignorance and fear.

Ironically, I am now married to an African American woman. It's been an interesting ride for me to face the inherited demons from my past and completely change the perspective of my life. My wife has allowed me to look at the world from a different set of eyes and it has made all of the difference in the world.

There is still a lot of racism in this country. I dread going to back to Indiana or going on business trips where there is all white people. Since most people don't know my background, I can't tell you how many racial slurs, jokes, etc. I've heard in the company of white people.

[patricia92243]

5. Here in the South, racism is alive and well - underground - but still very

much there. :(

[jeffrey_X]

8. The north is even scarier...

People will work next to one another or ride the train next one another and be a completely different person behind closed doors. It's like they have learned to tolerate some sort of diversity because they know it is only for temporary period of time until they can get back to their comfort zone of "whites only."

[Bill McBlueState]

6. Here's the thing

I was raised in a small Ohio River town, so I heard all kinds of racist shit. It's subtle there, because nobody really knows many non-white people, but you always got stuff like "Corey isn't bad for a n****r."

When I was six or seven, some of that had rubbed off on me and I made some offensive remark. Holy shit, my mom and dad acted like I had personally started Armageddon. They may be boring socially conservative Protestants, but they sure as hell made sure I didn't turn out racist.

[Fleurs du Mal]

7. Not raised around

but I sure was around a lot of it in Colorado. Bigotry is omnipresent in the US.

[taps]

9. My grandparents were so racist....yet

My mom and dad were the most non racist couple I have ever met.

[bleedingheart]

10. That isn't uncommon

being exposed to racism, which I view as an illogical fear or hatred, can make you realize how dumb it really is.

[Aunt Anti-bush]

12. Yes but luckily, I was an avid reader...

I picked up a book on MLK and realized my family was a little nuts. Luckily, they had me to straighten them out. It wasn't easy, but they've turned around and no longer see color or sexuality or anything else as a barrier between human beings.

[bleedingheart]

14. my mom's views are completely different today

she is a bigger bleedingheart liberal than I am.....

[Career Prole]

15. My Mom and Dad ("pale blue" white folk) were in the NAACP in the 60's

They'd take us kids downtown with them for the meetings and we'd play in the playground with the black kids while they were meeting.
I gave no thought at the time to how cool they were for doing this.
Mom? Dad? If you're looking down here right now...
:yourock:

[bleedingheart]

18. that is cool

[Career Prole]

27. Thanks!

:)

[underseasurveyor]

49. That's great. My mom in the 60's use to sometimes take me to

"Black Panther" meetings, I was around 9 or 10. Never gave it any thought that we were more often that not, the only white folk there. She was VERY active with a lot of different groups back then. Many a time we had anti-war meetings at our house and it looked like the UN was leaving our house when those meetings were over. My parents are still the coolest :-) Your's are too :hi: :waves toward the heavens @ CP's Mom and Dad:

[Straight Shooter]

16. My paternal grandmother was horribly racist

But my father and mother were adamant that we are all equal on Earth and should be treated as equal, that the only thing which should reduce us to less than equal status is to harm another.

When I encounter racism, particularly as witnessed in voter suppression, I become very angry. And when it's mixed with self-righteous holier-than-thou neochristianity, I literally go ballistic.

[libpunkmom]

17. YES

Grew up in SE Texas not far from alittle town named "Jasper" I'm sure most of you have heard of it!!! My family wants me to move back to raise my son there (I've been gone for 14 years) I always respond with a great big "HELL NO"".. Me and Mine are very happy here in Liberal Portland, Or.

[chookie]

19. Oh by golly YES

I was RAISED to be racist. Didn't know there was another way to be -- until the liberal nuns in my Catholic School straightened me out. I will always be grateful to them.

Living in a black neighborhood when I went to college finally extinguished any residual racist bullshit I grew up with.

Glad I had the grace to be enlightened.

[wysi]

20. My family...

... is full of racists. Generally undereducated, and some of them know better, but they say stupid and racist things anyway.

[IronLionZion]

21. yup..."those god damn muslims"

was a common saying in my house and we're supposed to be bleeding heart Catholics. We're not so much racist as we are religion-biased. Through marriages, we got to know and respect: hindus, protestants(my stepmom is of the Church of England), atheists, buddhists, and so on. But anyone who marries a muslim will probably cause way too much tension.

Sometimes the sweetest, kindest, oldest people can have hate in their hearts. I know the sweetest old neighbor lady who would never let you leave her house without eating something...but would refuse to let our Pakistani friend even enter her house. She would loudly talk about using nuclear weapons to "destroy all those terrorists once and for all". She actually cheered for the Hindus during this catastrophe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_conflict_in_India and when told that small children were doused with gasoline and set on fire, she said they deserved it.

scary...and she's coming over for thanksgiving with lots of sweets and huge friendy smile. it's surreal.

[Rhiannon12866]

33. Oh, my! I am so sorry that you have to deal with this

I know that there is no point in trying to reason with somebody who holds these views. She reminds me a little of my mother, who didn't used to be like this. But my Dad died, and she has become rabidly partisan. She said "good" to Abu Ghraib, while I cringed, and when I expressed dismay at the children being killed and maimed in Fallujah, she suggested that I go there and take care of them. Do all older people get this way? My grandmother, a lifelong Republican, finally came to her senses and voted for Bill Clinton, twice!:shrug:

[Sparkly]

22. Not at ALL

I grew up thinking racial prejudice was a thing of the past -- as in, "It used to exist, it was a huge problem, then there was a civil rights movement, and now it's fixed." That was my view of the world.

But my serious high-school sweetheart was black, and that's when I started to see the eyebrows raise. He gave me a "pre-engagement ring" one Christmas (do kids still do that?) and my parents got worried, which made me angry. My mother explained that they were concerned that if I were interracially married, it would be difficult for me because other people might not accept it and could be cruel. (I dismissed her with, "Oh mother, the civil rights movement was over a long time ago. Nobody would do that now!")

Then I started seeing it in little ways, but we both thought it was funny (he was a fairly sheltered boy from Maine, and as clueless as me) -- people stared at us in a bakery once, and we asked a lot of questions about whether they made interracial wedding cake-toppers, just to get their reaction; somebody stared in a grocery store, and we decided to have a long discussion pretending to pick out baby food just to see what they did. On one level, we were playing; on another, I suppose we were trying to test it and figure it out.

When my older sister married a guy from the midwest, my brother-in-law's parents got to meet my boyfriend. They said, "Wow, he uses big words and everything!"

And my boyfriend's relatives decided I was "spook." I have dark hair and eyes, but I'm pale as can be. "Well, she looks part spook," he told me they'd decided, "and part spook is the same as all spook." So I guess that did something for their comfort level.

We broke up by the time I graduated from college, but only for typical growing-up, growing-apart reasons. Another close friend from childhood joined the military and got in terrible fights in the South by insisting on going to bars where he wasn't welcome and speaking to white women, for example, and his stories clued me in, too. But it wasn't until I went to graduate school and met students from other regions who told me about their parents' racism that I even realized it was still so pervasive. And still my first response was, "Don't they realize we've had a civil rights movement already? What's their problem?"

[LeftyMom]

23. I didn't notice it until I was older.

From time to time I encountered people who said racist things but for the most part they seemed to be an abberation. My late Grandfather tried to scare me away from the rickety servant stair in his old country farmhouse by telling me there were "colored people down there." I was about eight years old and I knew about the civil rights movement and had some idea of what racism was but it never occured to me that even an old man with a grade school education in a small town in Kentucky could possibly say something so stupid- after all it was the late '80s and hadn't that sort of thinking had gone out of style back in the dark ages when my parents were kids riding dinosaurs to one room schoolhouses? Little did I know that "colored people" were a popular boogie man that year, I'd never heard of Willie Horton.

Then I noticed that the churches my friends went to were divided as much by hue as by creed. Seemed odd to me, why would God care about people's coloration, shouldn't he find them the Church they'd be happiest in, not the one where everybody looked like them?

A few years later, Proposition 187 passed. Notices were pasted up all over school letting students know that even if they were undocumented they could still go to thier classes and nobody at the school was going to report thier family to immigration. I wondered what the hell sort of sick society would require such a notice. I walked to the cafeteria to get my lunch and I noticed that the kids seated at the tables chatting and eating thier lunches could hardly be more perfectly divided by hue if it had been planned that way. I'd never noticed that before.

I guess it took me years to reprogram myself from the rosy picture the school system painted for me. The fight against racism didn't end when we moved on to the unit on the Vietnam war, and it wasn't just fought in the American south.

[bobbieinok]

24. anti-Irish

My mom grew up in a working-class suburb in St Louis; the family was part Irish and married many Irish.

When I was growing up in OK, my mom had what I thought were funny haha sayings (and she did too).....

...there's shanty Irish and there's lace curtain Irish

...'your Irish flag is flying' (=your slip is showing)

As far as I'm aware, for mom these were just phrases she remembered from her childhood. I was in my late 20s when I realized that they're phrases from the virulent anti-Irish period in our country.

[Doncha_know]

25. I was a victim of racism

I went to a Jr High where being white made you a minority. It was a poor school and in a rough area. I often found myself taunted and bullied over the color of my skin. I had be careful about the way I went walking home or I might get jumped.

You had to travel in packs with others like yourself so you would have a chance for survival. I have been called every name you can imagine just because I was a white boy in a school where the minority was the majority.

I used to just about get ill on Sunday nights because Monday was coming up soon. I have seen racism by both sides. Its not just the white people. God I hated those four years of my life.

[tishaLA]

36. You were "a white boy...

in a school where the minority was the majority"? And your profile says you are female. Did you have gender dysmorphia too?

[salin]

57. bwahahahaha

bust-ed.... good catch, tishLA!

[Digit]

26. My father was from the south and was a racist.

I did not have much contact with people of color until I was out of high school.
Now, decades later, I initiate conversations with blacks at work and get along well with most people. I think I am colorblind, which I believe is a good thing.
The only two I don't get along with are the Rethugs in my group. I had not realized how racist they were until one of them opened up to me. I was frankly shocked. On another day, they were making fun of one of our managers who is gay. I spoke up and said that one of my best friends was gay, and they shut up. Now, they are making my life a living hell at work. What I should have done was filed a complaint. I am not gay, but I have a problem with these self righteous people.
I work for a fortune 500 company. Do you think I would be fired for filing a complaint the next time? I live in a red state, but my boss is Dem.

[Tennessee T]

28. I remember KKK

I was raised in, as Strom Thurmond would say, " The Gray-ut Stat-ut ah
Sow Cal-i-na!" As a 4 or 5 year old I remember riding with my parents
to visit relatives in Georgia and passing KKK rallies, with the cross burning and the whole 9 yards. It was wide open, no one would stop them. It was very scary! I have always been anti-rascist and caught hell in high school. I was called a n**** lover and have had my share of fights.

[Tennessee T]

29. I remember KKK

I was raised in, as Strom Thurmond would say, " The Gray-ut Stat-ut ah
Sow Cal-i-na!" As a 4 or 5 year old I remember riding with my parents
to visit relatives in Georgia and passing KKK rallies, with the cross burning and the whole 9 yards. It was wide open, no one would stop them. It was very scary! I have always been anti-rascist and caught hell in high school. I was called a n**** lover and have had my share of fights.

[recoveringrepublican]

30. my mother was ignorant, my father counter acted it

my brother, my mother, and I all learned from my father. The only time my father ever hit me was when I said the "N" word. I think I was 7. I honestly don't know where I heard it from, I doubt I knew what it meant, but even to this day I remember the anger/sadness in his face hearing me say this.

[Rhiannon12866]

31. Not at all for me. In fact, nobody ever mentioned anything

I find my father's family particularly baffling in this regard, since they are the least prejudiced people that you can imagine. My grandmother and my father, who I was closest to, had as close friends and embraced just about every ethnic group that you can imagine. Nobody ever said anything against any group to me or in front of me, so when I first came to hear racial remarks, it really shocked me. It just never dawned on me that people could feel this way.:shrug:

The reason that I find my father's family baffling, is that they are WASP, DAR-eligible, life-long Republicans. My Irish Democrat grandfather died young, so my grandmother was the major influence on the family. Is it possible to be socially progressive Republicans? My grandmother finally found her true political voice after joining a left-leaning group called "Bridges for Peace" and she invited me along on a peace mission to the USSR, shortly before it fell, the trip of a lifetime. She voted Democrat for the first time in her life when she voted for Bill Clinton. She phoned me, to tell me, and I told her that I did, as well, but that there was no need to tell the rest of the family, LOL!:D

[Booster]

32. I was raised in Texas by Texans. What do you think?

[Carson]

34. I was raised in Kentucky by Kentuckians and despite how some may

stereotype, neither my parents nor their parents were racists.

[greekspeak]

37. My grandmother was an irrational racist

She thought that black people had strange diseases that white people would catch from them. She also taught me when I was little that if I went near black people that I would be kidnapped, painted black, and I would never see my family again. Sounds absurd, but when you are a four year old ruled by fear from the start, it is not so absurd. Ask me sometime why I was afraid of thunder and lightening and mannequins, paintings of Blue Boy, and the bathroom door.

[MissMarple]

38. No, I was raised by Roosevelt Democrats.

[anti_shrub]

39. A little

My grandfather on my mother's side called black people "colored", but that's what the proper term was when he was growing up and there wasn't any intended racism behind it. It got some weird looks later in his life though.

Grandpap was pretty progressive for someone born in 1912, he was a bus driver and most of his routes were in black neighborhoods. He used to get shit from friends and co-workers because he wouldn't participate in their racial jokes and would actually speak nice of black folks.

My dad was somewhat less tolerant, his family was hardcore Irish catholic and they really didn't like anyone who wasn't Irish and/or catholic regardless of race. My dad was the youngest kid so maybe he had the time to realize that wasn't the right way to treat people. He ended up a fairly liberal union Democrat, but he was known for dropping the N-word on rare occaisons. Hard to break what you've been taught I guess.

[DemGirl7]

40. Yes...

My Grandmother on my mother's side is somewhat racist... I would hear the N word come out of her mouth sometimes...but the weird thing is that according to my mom, she was never like that before, when they lived in PA, but it only started to happen when they moved to NY. Also my mother isn't too fond of the gay lifestyle...she doesn't hate gays, she just doesn't understand it, which was the same with my father.

[malmapus]

41. Yes - Raised in Georgia

My dads family is / was VERY racist, but really admire my parents because they didn't want me in that atmosphere. Got to the point where we would only see his family on Thanksgiving and Christmas and then as they never seemed to learn, totally cut them out of our lives. Can sound a bit extreme I know, but there was alot of hatred and ignorance that would be voiced.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

42. When I was 6, I told my grandmother off for using the "N" word.

in front of all of my relatives. They were stunned....

[bloom]

43. For some people there always has to be some group to scapegoat

I saw a book on the history of the area my great grandparents settled in. Back then the Danish were looked down upon. For being lazy drunks or something - the recent immigrants.

I couldn't believe it.

Seems that is how it is.

If there wasn't a group to scapegoat - people would invent one. (red states/blue states, anyone? :shrug: )

[immoderate]

44. Absolutely not!

My parents were WWII vets. Yeah my mother wore army boots. Both born in Brooklyn in 1923. They were absolutely adamant about not allowing any racial epithets to be used.

My neighborhood, growing up, was integrated (more or less). Mostly blacks and Jews. The schools and scout groups I went to were integrated and mixed. I have seen relatively little racism in my life. But some of my black friends have told me stories that are outrageous.

My high school class president was Italian, vice president was black, secretary was Polish, and the Treasurer was Cuban. I feel lucky that way.

--IMM

[karlrschneider]

45. Hooboy, I guess so! My father was as racist as they come.

I grew up in the 50s echoing his attitude (hey, what did I know?...I was a kid)...he had a psychopathic hatred for jews, 'niggers' and had multiple synonyms for them. When I began to have black and Jewish friends, he went semi-ballistic. Told me all about how the "jews killed Jesus" (which was, as I later discovered a bunch of hypocrisy, after I found out he'd been visiting whores)...

[underseasurveyor]

46. Heavens no my parents would slap the crap outta ya

if they heard racist talk. Not a physical slap but verbally and boy can my Mother also give "a look." :mad:
Raised for the most part of my young impressionable life in So. Cal. Our white family has always been very open and welcoming of all races and faiths into our house. You miss out on so much otherwise, but um especially food wise:9

Living where I do now I miss the mix. Same ol, same ol racist white bread almost everywhere you go. Hell even the Dutch and German's dislike each other around here and they're both white. And if you're neither of Dutch or German descent but still white then they'll get together so they can compete as to which one of em gets the most points for the best slur. So you can imagine how ugly it gets when any color moves into the neighborhood. It's a really strange corner of the world around here :crazy:
And *OH* - *MY* - *GOD*, don't even think about being one of them homos:eyes:

Ignorance = fear and fear = hate.

[UdoKier]

47. Does Grandma count?

My parents were not racist (though probably had some latent racist tendencies - but never used slurs or consciously discriminated against anyone).

My Grandma used to complain about "the nigras" and "the gypsies".

Her father was apparently a supporter of the KKK and a believer in the old Confederacy.

Even as a kid I found those views pretty appalling.

[oldgrowth]

48. Dad was a ass face racist and a lot more

My mother was a JFK dem. and good person and thew dad out when I was 12 and not long after I started going to Vietnam rallys in Portland and I loosed any baggage we where all one!!!But in later years I moved to southern Oregon there a lot of racists there!Ashland is the only island of free thinking down there!!Lets remember racism,sexism and homophobia is passed on generational mainly!!!!!

[iamthebandfanman]

50. yes.

yes i was, and im proud to say they have all changed and no longer have those views.

[OnionPatch]

51. I lived in a small Ohio town

and was it ever racist! Would you believe I never went to school with any black kids at all! My father and his family were horribly racist. Anyone who was not the same ethnicity and religion were looked down on to varying degrees. I think that was part of the reason why I'm a liberal now. Even though I was a kid, I knew the way they treated minorities stunk. My mother, bless her soul, argued with my dad about racism often. She was smart and I respected her. I have her to thank for raising my sisters and me into decent people.

[jsw_81]

52. Yes, unfortunately

I hate to admit this, but my parents -- especially my dad -- made many, many racist and homophobic comments over the years. I remember one nasty incident in particular when my dad used the "n" word in a restaurant when there was an African-American couple sitting at the next table; I'm certain that they heard him. I was so angry that I almost got up and left.

Dad voted for Bush. Twice.

[wickerwoman]

53. My dear old gran didn't mean anything by it,

but she had some interesting views about the Japanese. Could have been much worse though.

The sickening homophobia in my immediate family is a bigger concern.

[mandyky]

54. My parents were Ignorant (vs hateful) racists

We are from rural upsate NY where very few ethnic groups existed. In a neighboring county there was talk of a large KKK group.
My parents used the N word, but they mellowed and learned their lessons (partially due to a "guess who's coming to dinner moment" I pulled as a young adult). Fortunately, we moved alot when I was under 10 and lived in a area where there were black migrant workers, so I had exposure and positive experiences

In the 70s and 80s my parents became more enlightened due to meeting some real racists in the South. In LA they visited a cousin who knew people whose daughter had had a black child and the parents pulled the she's dead to us attitude. They went to Mexico when they visited my brother in El Paso and were really touched by the plight of children in the streets. So, I am proud to say although my parents raised me with a degree of racism, it was more from ignorance and lack of exposure and they have changed. My father still dislikes Jews, but it is not an overt thing, and it is something I just recently noticed.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

55. No- I Never Heard The N-Word In My Household..

The worst I ever heard a black person called was schwartze...

which just means black in German and Yiddish...


I moved to FL as a kid in 70 and my dad worked in the construction business... At his first day of work he sat down with the black guys to eat his luch... He naturally gravitated towards them.... They told him he would "get in trouble" for eating lunch with them... It blew him away....

[JNelson6563]

56. Yeah, especially after the race-riots

that caused us to flee our home in Detroit. My twin brother and I were being mugged a knife-point for our milk money in first grade. Lots of racial slurs from the parents of kids this stuff happened to.

Apparently they didn't see this was a result of oppression and police brutality etc. Action-reaction.

I'm just glad I was able to achieve a more enlightened view.

Julie

[FlaGranny]

58. In my immediate family I

never heard racist statements. I heard them in the community around me, but nothing too bad. My schools were segregated and I never heard or saw the black kids being called names or anything. I was raised in a small farming community. I was lucky.

Edit: I had some racist family members, which I became aware of later on. I never realized they were racists until after they became "saved." I like my "unsaved" family's values better.