Quote:
Originally posted by Eirene_DGP
Navane...You just don't get it.....
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But, Eirene I think she is making quite the effort to. I think everyone in the thread is making an effort to have adult, non-confrontational discussion about this always timely and always important topic.
I'm a white as white can be girl from the Mid-West. I had a very liberal and accepting mother and so those values were intstilled in me and I am grateful for that. But except for the occasional minority in a class or at work, I wasn't exposed enough to them to really appreciate the issues they have to deal with on a day to day basis.
I am now dating a Puerto Rican man and it's become quite clear to me. He can drive through the Bronx alone no problem. When I am with him, every cop car slows down and looks at me - as if to see if I'm ok being with this Hispanic man. When I fly by myself, I never get stopped. When I am with him, always. When we were looking for apartments, he would call and leave his name (both first and last name being distinctively Latin) and we wouldn't get a call back. I'd leave my name with the same people and be called back right away. It's definitely opened my eyes.
Yet we still do not see eye to eye on some issues, and I am not sure we ever will. I mention how his name was a clear indicator to his Ivy League school what his bacground was and probably helped him get in. He agrees and says he doesn't care as they were shut out for so long. As he got a worse public school education becaue the city under-funds the more "ethnic" schools, how standardized tests are geared towards whites, etc. And he is right! But it still doesn't seem ok to me that maybe he took the place of a white kid who worked his butt off to get into an Ivy League school, too.
I guess I "just don't get it". But the point is, I can't. I never lived it, so I will never truly know it. All I can do is keep discussing it, try to understand it, try to educate myself and my own children and hope that someday they won't have to have this discussion with your children.