My H is Hispanic, I changed my name and now have a Hispanic last name. It's interesting when people realize it. I get a look, like, 'wait, what?' I am Whitey McWhiterson, blonde, very white skin, blue eyes.
I'm in the opposite boat. I'm Mexican and have a Slavic last name. I've had lots of people say, "You're Veronica LastName? Oh, I thought you were white. You sound white."
Usually I give them the dead eye stare and say, "I am white. At least that's what my birth certificate says."
Post by hisno1girl on Jan 23, 2013 10:31:45 GMT -5
Also, for futher information,
Where I work- I'm the only minority. The last place I worked at, there were two other minority women. The crazy law office I worked at before that, I was also the only minority. So, since 1997, I've had two minority co-workers.
Where I live - My part of the city is predominantly white. When I moved in to DH's home, a neighbor asked if I was DH's maid. (The neighbor asked DH, not me). There are parts of the city that are predominantly black. There are no predominant neighborhoods for other minorities.
IRL - I've had one Jewish friend in my whole life. I dont have any Asian friends because I don't know any Asians. I don't have any black friends outside of church but growing up, I did have black friends in school. As of now, all of my IRL friends are either Mexican or white.
I live in Utah. And not even in Salt Lake City. We are kind of notorious for our lack of diversity. The majority of people I see, work with, interact with are white. Usually Mormon. I have seen this very slowly changing over the years.
I do feel like my parents should have done more when I was younger to expose me to more cultures, religions, races.
I learned more from the first internet forum I posted on than I did from them.
This is something I worry about with my son. His daycare seems to be fairly diverse. This makes me happy, but I know there needs to be more to it than that.
Well, insight into the mind of white Southerners who know that racism is wrong and who try to treat people with equal respect regardless of skin color, we are always a little worried about being seen as racist or assumed racist.
I have hesitated for like five minutes in posting this because I am worried about how it is going to come across - poor white tamb, she really has it rough.
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
My former employer's dad wore a really bad toupee. She called it his rug, as in, "Mom, he came over here with that rug on his head again. I thought you made him throw it away." They were practicing Jews. Maybe a Jew Rug is a bad toupee, as worn by one of the chosen people.
If only this thread were happening at another time in my life. I would have you all beat. My freshman year of college, my best friend was half Filipina, half Irish; my next best friend was a gay half Native American guy, my favorite professor was a FTM Puerto Rican (I don't know of he was pre or post op since it's not like I was going to ask), I was dating a Mexican guy, and my room mates were both Pakistani women and also reggae fans. I was one of perhaps 5 white people in the neighborhood (most of my neighbors were black), and one of the others was my landlord, who only lived there part time and was an 85-year-old blind man. I would go days without seeing a white person aside from my own pasty face in the mirror.
Post by Captain Serious on Jan 23, 2013 11:01:42 GMT -5
No. My Dad is Egyptian, I live in a town that has a 30% Asian make-up (with a strong Indian component), my sons are South American/Hispanic/Native, and I'm just outside NYC.
Own up? Are you going to somehow take people to task for their living situations? There are some parts of the country, where try as you might, living in a diverse neighborhood just isn't a viable or even possible option.
"Why would you ruin perfectly good peanuts by adding candy corn? That's like saying hey, I have these awesome nachos, guess I better add some dryer lint." - Nonny
Post by thatgirl2478 on Jan 23, 2013 11:08:02 GMT -5
read the first page, skipped to the end...
where i live is 99% white. I might see a few black people occasionally, Hispanic only if i go to the Mexican restaurant, Asian if I go to the Chinese place. But, our town is really small & rural.
My aunt is Taiwanese and several members of her family live in China right now.
My job is highly diversified - but mostly it's Indians, Pakistanis, Saudis, a few Africans, a handful of Asians (I'm unsure of everyone's specific country of origin) and a bunch of white people. I work in IT though, it's a different crowd than our Marketing department.
Where we used to live, WE were the minority! That sure gave us something to adjust to when we moved!
i grew up in a diverseish area (overall diverse, but my immediate neighborhood was primarily white/black). i now live in a diverse area and interact with people of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds.
i will say, however, that typically i am freer and more candid here with my questions about racial and ethnic issues than i am IRL. which is, i guess, similar to how i am freer and more candid about other things (e.g., one non-family member IRL knows about my recent miscarriage, ALL of you do). there is less fear of offense or judgment, even though i know that i'm being judged and am just as likely to offend.
Growing up, I was one of the only black kids in the school, so my base of friends were all white, with a little pepper sprinkled in. In college, I pledged a black sorority, and made a lot of black friends. Now as an adult, the majority of my friends are black. I have a few white friends that I go out with but not enough to consider my group of friends diverse.
Post by adhdfashion on Jan 23, 2013 12:29:37 GMT -5
Where I live it's a sea of white people. I'm a hour for Seattle and I went to a diverse college. The only minorities interact with on a daily basis are Native Americans. My BFF and SIL.
For me, yes. I grew up in a predominantly white town, went to predominantly white schools (even college), and currently live in a predominantly white town. I have a Jewish friend, an Asian co-worker, blah, blah, blah, but I don't think those single interactions contribute much diversity to my life.
Nonetheless, I do not consider myself naive when it comes to issues of race and race relations. It's not like I'm one of those sheltered Real World kids who needs to be schooled on how the world works.
If we're talking about where we grew up -- that was whites-ville.
We literally bused in kids from the closest city to give them a better education and up our diversity quota.
I knew of only 1 Jewish family in town. Most kids went to CCD and got confirmed and what have you. When a Mormon family rolled into town it was big news (now there is a ward at the end of my parents' street, actually).
I live in Utah, what do you think?! But I grew up in a very diverse neighborhood with a high population of African American, Chaldean (well, a lot of middle eastern really), Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indian.
Both my sister and I went to very diverse high schools and I went to a less diverse college. It was a shock to me when I went there to see how sheltered people really were in regards to racial stuff.
I live in Denver, which has to be about the whitest place ever. Last time I cared to look, we had about 3% racial minorities. That's pretty much the same percentage I know or interact with on a regular basis. There are five minority kids in Ben's class of 22 and I consider that to be pretty diverse. We're Jewish and Ben is the only one on his class.
I grew up in the backwoods of northwestern MN. Conservative Whitey mcWhiteville. One of the two black families in town went to my church, and that's about it. Oh, there was a reservation nearby, so we did have some minorities at my school. It was sort of segregated in that no one chose to mix the two races friends-wise. Yeah.
In college I was introduced to a more diverse population, and living in CA I am now friends with many many Hispanic folk as well as Asian. It's a mixed bag here which has been great for me as a naive midwesterner.
Still not a very large black population here, which is sad.
Post by iheartvino on Jan 23, 2013 14:02:14 GMT -5
There isn't a ton of racial diversity in my life. I live in a city that is still highly segregated, for the post part. And the only minorities here are either African Americans or, for the most part, Asians, who attend university here or work for Google, Microsoft, etc. This is based on census data, not my own observations/stereotypes.
Almost half of the employees are minorities (8 out of 22 employees), and I work in areas that are predominently minority, but if I didn't work here, I wouldn't have those interactions. I have friends who are minorities, but most of them have moved out of the area.
The lack of racial diversity in my metro area, in general, is talk about a lot. There are nonprofits to attract immigrant and minority talent to the area, but they have not been successful in reaching their targets. I struggle with this. I love my metro area, and I don't want to leave, but this makes me sad.
There is more religious diversity here, particularly Jew, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Mennonite and Quaker, but not as much Middle Eastern/Asian religions.
I grew up in Central California. I was surrounded by minorities (Mexican descent primarily) but there wasn't a lot of interaction between the groups. I did have a number of Latino acquaintances growing up because I kind of floated between groups for the most part (primarily "nerd" category). We had very few non-Latino minorities in our community. I recall one bi-racial girl at the high school from which I graduated, with no Asians or any other minority that I can recall at all.
The grands' best friends have a mother who is Chinese and father who is Brazilian; the kids are multi-lingual with English, Mandarin, Portuguese and Spanish and the daughter is trying to teach the girls a little bit of Mandarin since grandmother who lives with them doesn't speak English. My neighbor (and karaoke host) next door just moved back to China for two years. Next door to him is a Russian couple. Four doors down, one of my closest friends out here was adopted from Mexico along with her twin sister by a missionary couple; her husband is from Ghana and is still active in his African community. Next door to them is a Filipino couple whose son is good friends with my older granddaughter. On the corner was another Chinese family who recently moved. Around the corner on the cul-de-sac is a good friend of the girls, a summer playmate since he's a bit younger, whose family is from India. At the bend is a couple who is friends with me who hail from India. Next door to them is another friend and her daughter, who lived on the same island as the girls and who are of Mexican descent. Behind us, another good friend and her husband are from Brazil. Four houses down are more friends of the girls, who hail from India. Maybe it's just our few streets, because a lot of the community around us doesn't seem as diverse as our little development. I rather like living here because of it, especially with the grands living here. It opens hearts and minds, imo.
I had an interesting relationship when we lived in Cleveland in that one of my good friends was an Israeli Jew, while my daycare provider and also a very good friend (whose son was very close with my sons) was a Palestinian Muslim. Both families were very active in their communities as well. My daycare provider's father was a community leader in their area of the US who held a position of power in their Palestinian community and the family of my Jewish friend still lived in Israel and were very well connected in their community as well. (She was a concert pianist in Canada when she moved to the US.) It made for some interesting conversations and learning experiences from both sides of the fence.
We are absolutely the minorities here. It's incredibly diverse. Well, racially diverse. Not remotely financially diverse and had we had a little more perspective when we moved here and figured out where to live, we would have aimed for a little more financial diversity. The entitlement here is...we would've chosen an area a little more diverse to raise kids in! But yeah - we're absolutely minorities in the area. My husband vanpools to work and in his van, out of a max of 8 people, they just got their first American! Everyone else is an immigrant from somewhere (India, China, France and Romania). It's a tech company, so the demand for talent is great enough that the company is awesomely multi-cultural. It's pretty cool - because they all work on different teams and some are top secret, they can't talk about work. So, instead, they talk about current events and how they would differ in the various countries - gun control has been the most recent hot topic. It's really interesting because you seldom get such a casual, diverse group of opinions on something!
Anyway - that's a tangent. Suffice to say, no, this board is definitely not the closest I come to diversity.