berbles, I did the same thing. I think it's because H is Chinese, but he doesn't look Chinese. I realized we were interracial a year ago and felt like an idiot.
LOL! I can do you one better. It wasn't until I was chatting with an African-American coworker who said something about us being interracial and I was like, "We are?" You should have SEEN how she laughed at/with me.
lollll. it took a thread about interracial couples on TK or TN for me to think about it, and then (idea) H was like, uh, yes? duh.
on the usage of "orientals," some of H's older aunts will use it occasionally. one year at christmas, his married-into-the-family white uncle came up to me and complained about so many orientals being in the room at once. that was neat.
It was so freaking bizarre. Mostly the speaking in tongues, because they still had a hick accent I seriously looked at my brother and said "Really??" and then promptly became an atheist. Or something like that LOL
It was so freaking bizarre. Mostly the speaking in tongues, because they still had a hick accent I seriously looked at my brother and said "Really??" and then promptly became an atheist. Or something like that LOL
Oh man, the speaking in tongues thing..
I went to a private Christian school for my middle school years. Every 8th grader goes on a long weekend camp trip to some sleepaway camp in the mountains. It's not required that you go but the parents have to pay for the trip for the kid whether they go or not. Anyway, one night during evening service the pastors were really pushing for a, I guess, fervent? service. Near the end they had the 5 or 6 high school kids that accompanied us come to the front. Then they called up 5 or 6 of us 8th graders.
Now, this was about the 2nd or 3rd hour of the service, after playing all day in the woods and shit, we were all exhausted. We're nice little Christian kids, we're not used to multi-hour services. Hell, most of us didn't want to be there in the first place (church, not camp). Anyway, so they call us up and stand us in front of the high schoolers and they all start praying and we have to pray with them. They are calling down the power of the Lord to help us speak to him, give us his tongue, Oh Lord! And we had to stay up there until we did start talking in tongues.
When it was my turn up, I just stood in front of the girl looking at her like wtf? After about 15 minutes or she was getting annoyed and started saying things like "C'mon, you can do it! Let the power of the Lord enter your body! Huamdlig glding loplooiple shawoop! Come on, try!" Eventually I just got tired and mumbled some nonsense and ran back to my seat as fast as possible. It was the second weirdest religious experience I've ever had.
Dude, why are you leaving me hanging about the FIRST weirdest???
Nope. My dating life was pretty white (I can think of two guys who happened to be black, one Hispanic. Oh, and at least three gay guys, that I know of. I had a talent for that.) but my social circle in general is a little of everything. If anything, there have been some times in my life where it was the reverse, and I was the minority among a really, really diverse group of friends as the only or close to only white person. Socioeconomic diversity is a little different. I would say there is far more of that here than in my day-to-day life.
No, I'm from a DC suburb, plenty of minorities here. Out of my four closest friends, only one is white and I met her at college in a rural area. My other three best friends are Korean, El Salvadorian and Mexican. I moved to Memphis for 3 years and was pretty horrified with the way people are down there.
Dude, why are you leaving me hanging about the FIRST weirdest???
Lol, my bad! First weirdest experience was the same trip, next morning.
After my enlightening foray into the world of tongues, we got to head back to our cabins. It was about 11:30 or so. We all fell into our bunks for about (what felt like) 5 minutes when all the lights when on full blast and those damn high schoolers and pastors were yelling "Up, up! We got a surprise for you!" It was 4 in the morning and they really could have just taken their surprise and shoved it, but it's really hard to say that to your pastor. So we all stumble out of our cabins and they herd us onto some old creaky buses.
After an hour or so of driving into the mountains (this is WA state, btw, so mountains everywhere) we pull into a base area. They get us off the buses and we walk up to where the rest of the pastors are waiting. And 10 five foot tall wooden crosses. Seriously.
There was about 70 of us and they broke us up into groups of 7 and told us all that our "surprise" was that we get to hike our tired asses up a motherfucking mountain carrying a wooden cross. Like Jesus. Each one of us in the group would carry it for 20 minutes then hand it off. The mountain? 4 miles to the fucking summit.
We picked up our crosses and off we went. Needless to say, I hung to the back of the group and when nobody was looking jumped into the bushes. No fucking way was I carrying some stupid wood 4 miles up a damn mountain. Once a group or two passed and the groups lost more and more stragglers I started hiking up. I will say that the views at the summit were nice. And I do wonder what the other hikers that had nothing to do with the camping trip thought about 10 groups of middle schoolers schlepping wooden crosses up a mountain.
So bizarre.
ETA I guess what made it just so completely strange was how unprepared we were for all of it. Because the school was not like that. We had chapel once a week where we had to dress up, we had a bible class as part of our curriculum each year and the teachers decided if they wanted to pray at the start of their classes. And maybe a few times a year there would be a big chapel service, and if there was something tragic or important going on the headmaster might lead a prayer over the intercom system with the school. And that's it. Oh, and chapel services were opening prayer, singing, the message/lesson for the week, some more singing, closing prayer, done. In and out in an hour. Lol, then out of nowhere we were being handed big ass crosses and being directed toward a hiking trail. So, so weird.
Those two experiences definitely top the weird religious experience charts! I've gone on a mission trip and to FCA camp and the weirdest thing that happened was a loaf of bread being being passed around an entire large gymnasium of students and everyone actually getting some of it (like the loaves and fishes story). Of course we were all taking tiny little pieces, because who wanted to be the one that ruined. But I think it was the same general premise as the speaking in tongues incident, just about 100x less weird.
Those two experiences definitely top the weird religious experience charts! I've gone on a mission trip and to FCA camp and the weirdest thing that happened was a loaf of bread being being passed around an entire large gymnasium of students and everyone actually getting some of it (like the loaves and fishes story). Of course we were all taking tiny little pieces, because who wanted to be the one that ruined. But I think it was the same general premise as the speaking in tongues incident, just about 100x less weird.
I live in a very international city and work in a very diverse office but at a European level, so I interact daily with a whole bunch of nationalities & religions but not necessarily minorities.
I'd say the same goes for our friends: they're of varied nationalities/cultures/religions and only a couple of them could be considered racial minorities (Morroccan & Iranian). 95% of them aren't orginally from here though...
I finally understand why my mom was so hesitant to let me go with my friends on their youth group trips!
She did let me go on a few, and they were totally harmless. I can only imagine my mom's reaction if something like nic's story had happened to me. We are Jewish but I was raised relatively non-secular.
Regularly I generally interact only with white people. We are not particularly social, and when we do attend functions they are generally family events.
Our more immediate families are not racially/ethnically diverse and, in fact are very racist, except for one (new) uncle who is Japanese and another uncle's ex-wife who is Korean. I have cousins who are half Korean, but when my uncle and aunt divorced, she became involved with the Jehovah's Witnesses and stopped letting my cousins come to family events.
I do not allow racial jokes, slurs, malignment, etc. in my home. My family knows that I am passionate about this, and it's a serious bone of contention between me and several of them.
My children and one particular niece are very diverse in their friendships and that makes me very happy. They know that they are always welcome to have any of their friends over at my house, which is not the case with my niece so much.
Post by underwaterrhymes on Jan 23, 2013 7:28:06 GMT -5
I was one of maybe 20 white students in my elementary school and the vast majority of my friends were black.
We moved to a different area right before middle school and it was a pretty good mix of ethnicities and backgrounds and that has stayed a very important part of my life. I couldn't live in an area with no diversity.
Plus, I've lived internationally and work in international development.
Well- I'm white but my son is Korean- so I interact with him on a daily basis :-) I also have an Asian dentist, Asian primary DR, one of DHs best friends is Taiwanese, and another good friend is Egyptian. In my family I also have puerto rican, AA, and biracial cousins. I live about 30 miles from NYC. So even though my town itself is pretty "white" there's a lot of diversity in the whole surrounding area
No. Our playgroup gets together weekly and there are a few minorities who are part of the group (Korean, black, Hispanic). And my book club is a very mixed bag and pretty close to 50% minority (black and Hispanic)
Many yrs ago, an old boss of mine was in line at grocery store with her then 4 yr old daughter. There was a black man in front of them and boss's daughter said "why is that man still wearing his mask? Halloween is over." Of course my boss was mortified but luckily the man was very gracious and just explained it was his skin and shook hands w/her so she could see he felt the same and was just a regular guy, no matter his skin color. Boss suddenly realized they lived ins very white section of town so when it was time to put her kids in public school she didn't put them in the lily white neighborhood school, but a diff one w/more diversity
No, I've always had friends of different races. I'm white and most of the guys I dated weren't, so there's that. My BIL is from Thailand (which reminds me that the boy who gave me my first kiss was from there as well).
Now, I work at a university which is very diverse. A lot of our student assistants are from other countries and it is interesting to learn about their culture and answering their questions about ours.
My bff is Vietnamese, and my other bff is Colombian. My next door neighbor is Indian and drop dead gorgeous (she's also a hot mess, but that's another story for another day)
That said, can somebody tell me what a Jew rug is? I'm afraid to finish the UO post because it's burning my retina
Post by mrssavy42112 on Jan 23, 2013 9:32:53 GMT -5
Definitely not. I'm 1/2 Cuban. The other half is Irish, German, Czech & British. DH is French & raised in the French West Indies. My schooling had a combo of White, Black, Hispanic, Indian, and Middle Eastern. My church had even more diversity than that. I now live in a neighborhood that is now mostly White or Black & it feels weird to not have that diversity anymore.