General Discussion

People in my 99 and 44/100 Ivory Soap White "hometown," the town I fled, are certain they are not racists. They don't see color.



But then in conversations, they'll say things like, "The Mexicans..." blah, blah, blah. Or they'll talk about some city they wouldn't live in, usually a city that's not white.

I live in a city that is not white. 40% of the people here speak Spanish at home. Public school graduations and promotions are bilingual so proud immigrant grandparents and parents can follow along. Most of the shoppers in Wal-Mart are speaking Spanish, and most retail employees are bilingual. My wife and kids are bilingual too, but my kids are a little shy about their Spanish. My own brain, as much as I try, seems to be fossilized in English, but I almost know what's happening when conversations are a mix of both languages.

My own grandfather, a man who worked with all sorts of people and had honest friendships with them, was very upset that I was, in his words, marrying "a Mexican girl." (Sadly my white grandma who spoke Spanish fluently and loved Mexico had passed away.) In my grandpa's white world of privilege that simply wasn't done. He boycotted our wedding, but he eventually overcame his upbringing.

My great aunt, my grandfather's sister in law, was accepting of everyone. She was happy to attend our Big Catholic Wedding. She'd violated her family moral traditions several times by divorcing, eventually finding True Love with a divorced Italian. Oh my! Scandal! My family is one of many Catholic heretics, including myself.

My great aunt was born in San Francisco before the great earthquake and was fairly affluent. Like my grandma, born just after the earthquake, she spoke fondly of her family's Chinese laundryman, the black laborers she grew up with, Japanese and Mexican gardeners, Irish housekeepers... But she could also say the most awful racist things. She never used the impolite "N" word, she always used "colored," she never used any of the common racial slurs, not even the "J" word for the Japanese during World War II. But she and her sister were, in every way, people of white California privilege.