Topic #5. How does your geographical location effect racial/religious/cultural issues that you face
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1. How does your geographical location effect racial/religious/cultural issues that you face
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 1:51 PM/EST

One of the things that struck me about the ALS series is that

the Simms family chose to live in NY city in order for their

daughters to have better opportunities. My husband and I

thought long and hard over this issue. Two years ago he got

out of the Coast Guard and we had to decide for ourselves

where to live. Most of my family lives in Mississippi, and I was

mostly raised in the South, I have one brother who lives in NJ.

But I didn't want to raise our child there, nor did he, so we

chose Seattle which is where his mother lives. We have found

a lot of acceptance and tolerance here, living in a very diverse

community, with people of all races. A few weeks ago, I had

my daughter down at the park by lake Washington watching

the ducks. Not three feet from me, and Asian man sat with his

daughter and a big bag full of crackers. Without a second

thought, he passed some crackers over to us so we could

have a part in the fun. It kind of made me think of how lucky

we are to be living in a place where our daughter will have an

opportunity to interract with and know so many different races

and kinds of people. We would never find that in the South,

where my parents are from there is so much open hostility

right now, and has been for years, I feel it would have been

very stressful for us as a family to live near my family. Just

wondering if anyone else has faced this, and how they feel

about where they live.

2. Location.....location......location
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 2:39 PM/EST

Living in the city where people black and white died for civil rights never lets me forget how location effects how we interact with one another. There are places in Alabama in which I might would think twice about taking a white female friend for both of our sake. It is not nearly as bad as things were in the past, however it is still here among on both sides of the fence.

I feel lucky to have a wide variety of friends and sometimes their acquaintances allow me a brief glance into how they were brought up. The old south is alive and well so those who view interracial dating as I do always have to keep in mind that things are much better than they were, but things are not nearly where they should be.

How is it around the world, guys?

3. geographical location
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 4:05 PM/EST
mistacia

I feel that is a very important issue. Especially when you are raising children. It is our responsibility to raise our children in a multi-cultural area. We used to live in a all white community and the stereotyping and overall lack of knowledge is there. Though it is every where there is less of it in our multi-cultural community. Though it may seem like we are sheltering our children from racism, i look at it as i am exposing our children to children like themselves and many other cultures. I believe a small part of racism comes from the lack of knowledge and the unknown of what other races are like. When children are raised in one race communities they lose out on what the world is all about.And those children who are bi-racial or multi-cultural lose a portion of self-identity. Though both parents may be involved children do seek identity from their environment and peers a great deal.I am not saying there aren't children out there who have lived in all white communities or one race communities and not thrived into healthy adults. I do have friends who chose to do so and there was a few struggles on the way. And i don't feel i should expose our children to such. Just my thoughts. :)

4. geographical location
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 4:47 PM/EST

I agree with what Mistacia posted. We lived in an all-black neighborhood for six years. When we decided to move it was not because of the racial makeup of the neighborhood, but issues relating to crime, space, schools, etc.

When looking for a new area to live in, we were very conscious of the racial makeup. There were areas we liked that we never considered because they were too white. Not only did I not want to risk having a cross burned on my lawn, or my house vandalized. I also refuse to raise a biracial child in an all-white environment. An all-black environment is not ideal either, but if I had to choose, I'd probably choose a black neighborhood over a white one.

In the Chicago area it's damn near impossible to find a diverse neighborhood or suburb. There are a few but they have other drawbacks. The town we chose is presently mixed, but that's only because the whites haven't all moved out yet, give it a couple of years. It's so ridiculous to me. Since we moved in a year ago, at least five houses on our street have sold. Every one had a white family moving out and a black family moving in.

Ideally we'd be able to live in a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-everything environment, but I don't see it happening, there are just too many scared and ignorant people in the world. Or at least around here...

5. Location....
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 4:57 PM/EST

I agree with both of you ladies on where you live when it comes to children and raising a family. I am somewhat concerned about the challenges my cute little neice will have to face growing up bi-racial and beautiful in the south. Her parents (my bother and his wife) have no plans to relocate at this time.

The "white flight" phenom is happening everywhere in America, so finding diverse communities to live in will become more and more of a challenge. However, I don't want to stay here in the deep south all my life. I think the opportunties to meet and live among people different than myself are more prevalent in the north now than the south.

6. Discrimination Awareness
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 6:11 PM/EST
kea

When my son, who is both black and white, but was raised in an Hawaiian culture, went to the Mainland for the first time when he was 16 yrs. old, he experienced his first encounter with discrimination against people of color. He went to spend 6 wks at BYU, in Utah (pending a scholarship) with six of his friends who were of Polynesian decent. He said that not only in the shopping malls, but even at the school, they were treated as if they had leprosy (his words). He came home with a real negative impression about the Mainland. This past Christmas I gave him a trip to NYC to visit family and see the City, as he has spent most of his life on an Island. Thankfully, his impressions of people on the Mainland didn't stop with the people in Utah, or the Mormon Church. He absolutely loved meeting all the different kinds of people in NYC and found them to be very open and friendly.

7. How does your geographical location effect racial/religious/cultural issues that you face
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 6:33 PM/EST
gwendolyn

I've lived in California for over 30 years. Growing up in the mid-west, in a working poor family we didn't know the term diversity or multicultural, but we did know there were differences if you were black or white and there was a very wide gap between the two groups. The town divided along black/white lines, with the local high school in the middle, the only place where the races met. After school everyone went their separate ways.

When I moved to Southern California in the early 1960s, I thought I had gone to the mecca of racial harmony. The races mixed, or so I thought, and everyone respected the differences around them. Differences were ignored; as one Los Angeles individual put it: "We're one big happy family." One realization occurred with my move to Southern California. First, Southern California was not the mecca of racial harmony as I believed. A conservative State with an attitude and ethnic and cultural separations leads to: Whites to the Valley, Blacks to South Central and Chicano/Latinos to East L.A.

Living in California we tend to think that all is well in paradise, but that is not the case in California with all of its "liberalism," California is a very, very conservative state. I am in a lesbian mix race relationship. I do not fee comfortable in some areas of this state, and I don't think I am alone in this. I live and work in a small town, that has the reputation for its liberalism, but I feel there is a lot of hate and homophobia in this community. So I tend to travel to the larger communities or bigger cities to let my hair down.

Back to the point of this entry, my partner pointed out there are no postings regarding the subject of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or Transgender relationships. As she pointed out there are different dynamics going on with FF MM BW, W and People of Color that should be included in this dialogue and could make for an interesting discussion.

8. For Gwendolyn...
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 6:56 PM/EST

I had much the same experience living in Northern California for about six years of my adult life. When I met and married my husband there, I had the pleasure of having a multitude of friends to support us, in keep us sort of enveloped in an ideal of racial harmony. Several little things began to change my views on this, the most jolting of which was an evening out at a local theater festival in downtown Carmel. We were packed into a tiny theater which was SRO, we had gotten four of the last five seats in the place(it was a double date with two friends of ours) and the final seat was next to my husband, who was the only black man in the theater. We watched as people did everything they could to avoid sitting next to him. Finally he turned to me and asked, "Do I smell or something?" It really struck me how prejudice happens in all sorts of ways, sometimes verbally, and sometimes more subtly but none the less, just as obvious. I sat there thinking that evening, first of how badly I felt for 'him.' but then that turned into me thinking that to be a family, I was going to have to learn and accept that I would face this too, in a different way of course, but that I would need to prepare and learn to come to an understanding that no matter where we live, there are always going to be people who look at us with hostility, move away when we sit down somewhere, etc...there's just now getting around that, no matter where you live.

9. ps...Gwendolyn...
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 7:00 PM/EST

I agree that there should be more dialogue about the different dynamics of our different kinds of relationships..any chance you might come up with a topic?

10. location, location, location
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 8:47 PM/EST
ethie'sgirl

My take on opening this discussion to include mixed-race relationships of all orientations? Absolutely! It's all part of making sense of this enormous issue.

I live in New York City -- I've lived in both Manhattan and Brooklyn -- and I think living here makes dating white men easier for me than it would be if I still lived upstate. I grew up in an area where there was my family and the other black family, one Jewish couple, one family of Seveth Day Adventists, a handful of Baptists and one Mormon ... everyone else was Italian or Eastern European and Catholic. I don't think it ever even occurred to my girlfriends that I might actually want to *date* one of the guys we all had crushes on. That just wasn't done. Of course they had nothing to worry about: there was no chance one of those guys would have risked his popularity to ask me out. In my junior year of college I went to Europe and had to deal with a whole other take on mixed-race relationships. Certainly of all the places I've lived, I have felt most natural here in NYC. I know that there are plenty of people who look askance at me when I'm out with a white man, but it doesn't bother me too much.

11. north/south and urban/rural
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 11:21 PM/EST

In my experience there is a definite north/south and urban/rural dynamic on these issues though i haven't spent much time in really big cities.

In the north i think it less acceptible to express racism publically. But the races spend less time mingling.

In the south public racism is more normal. But the races spend allot of time mingling.

Religiously in the north to me it was something of a near-vacuum. People did it but didn't talk about it. In the south in the rural area it is very densely Christian. I was and am still dumbfounded at high school quiz bowl competitions with obscure Bible questions spread through without hardly a thought.

And yet it is well known that Sunday is one of the most segregated days. I actually generally enjoy black churches more than white except contributions tend to be very public, however unrecorded.

12. For Gwendolyn
Tue, Sep 14, 1999 - 11:26 PM/EST

I used to think that if my fiancee and I moved to

the west coast that we would never have to worry

about hostility. Thought that because there was a

huge variety of races, all was well- but didn't

consider that they pulled off to different areas

and segregated themselves as much as you describe.

In a recent real estate class, they told us that

my southern Ohio city has the highest numbers of

fair-housing law suits in all the USA. That

really offended me, as I thought we were doing

well here. My own neighborhood has whites, blacks,

and asians. After all, no real "trouble." Sound

like an uneducated white comment, huh? Guess I've

had my head sticking in the sand about all this

and now I want to understand what it is really

like. And that's just mixing color and race with a

traditional male-female relationship. I imagine

the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender

relationships feel even more separation. Two dear

friends of mine are gay and lesbian - they too are

always seeking big towns for fun and small country

areas for peace. Thought it was just personal

preference and free-will choices. That isn't

freedom - it seem

13. How does your geographical location effect racial/religious/cultural issues that you face
Wed, Sep 15, 1999 - 6:12 AM/EST

I met my husband in Virginia, I lived in Mass. at the time. When our relationship became serious, I made the decision to move to Virginia because I felt our mixed race relationship would be more accepted in an area where there were more black people. Northerners like to think of themselves as more "liberal", until you marry someone who is black, or a black family tries to move into your all white neighborhood. Racism is just as real and prevalent in the north as it is in the south.

When I moved to Virginia, I learned that our relationship was accepted by some, and not by others. There were white people who didn't accept us as well as black people. The difference from the north and south for me was that in the south, people let you know where you stand right away, whereas northerners tend to keep their opinions to themselves.

I guess the point I am trying to make is this. Racism is everywhere, if you are looking for it.

I don't try to explain to people my mixed race marriage. I don't worry if some co-worker or neighbor is going to accept my relationship or not, I just go on doing what I have to do to raise a family. I have found that many people who never knew a mixed race couple, suddenly become more open minded once they get to know me and my husband. And those that do not accept our relationship, in my opinion, are narrow minded. Those are the kind of people I would not want to know even if I were not in a mixed race relationship.

14. . How does your geographical location effect racial/religious/cultural issues that you face
Wed, Sep 15, 1999 - 9:14 PM/EST
smoothtap

Living in mid Ohio we have found areas that are better than some but we have also found areas that are worse. Seven years ago we were looking to rent a home and found a nice one in the paper. My wife set an appointment to meet with the owner and after several conversions over the phone they wanted us to stop by the house to see if we liked it. When we pulled up in front of the house we saw people in the living room window sitting waiting for us. As they saw me get out of the car they walk into the kitchen and refused to answer the door. We knocked several times and no answer, so we looked in the front window and saw them pushed up in a corner hiding, waiting for us to leave. When we got back home we tried to call them but they would not answer the phone. This action really ticked me off so we called the housing authority and they said with out proof they could do nothing and when they call the people they said the house had been rented. Now on the other side of the coin when we were buying our first home we found out that our realtor was gay. Once he knew that we knew he was gay and didn’t care, he worked very hard in helping us to buy a home and told us things about home buying that most homebuyers never know. He became more interested in helping us find a good home rather than just making a sale as we had found with other realtors.

15. Racism is everywhere, but do we perpetuate it?
Thu, Sep 16, 1999 - 2:11 PM/EST
antionette

Have you ever heard the joke, of a waitress serving coffee, and her customer askes; "I just moved here. How do you find the poeple in this town?" and the waitress replies, "Well how did you find them in your last town?"; The customer replies, "backstabbers, and selfish, all of them." "Well," Said the waitress, "you'll probably find them the same here." Then, later, another customer comes with the same question, and when the waitress asked about his last town he replied, "Oh, very helpful, kind, and thoughtful." And the waitress replied "I think you will find them the same way here." Some of it is perception and some of it is what we accept into our lives.

There is a book called "Why is this happening to me AGAIN?!" by Micheal Ryce: In it he talks about how we call repetitious experiences to us by what is inside of our thought processes or belief system. Like tuning forks we resonate with others that have a note in common with us, bringing them and those situations into our lives. So that, like Iyanla Vanzant says, "we can deal with them."

I dated men of color as often as not, and only three times did I or my friend receive any sort of racist backlash: Once was in GA; The other was in college, in MO.; The last was in Watts, CA.

I now live in a rural, town in MO. I have friends of different racial and sexual backgrounds. My son's best friend is bi-racial and my best friend, from Puerto Rico with her bi-racial husband, is very welcome here. Though I know there are some racist, it is not a community anthem.

To a degree, we call to us the experiences in our lives. When we return narrow minded, and judgemental beliefs we are accepting and promoting them. On an individual basis, we must decide what is apropriate. I continue to choose carefully for myself, and that effects my family, which effects thier friends.

Jesus said "Love thy neighbor," which litteraly is all those who are in your life. Race, I believe, was not a condition.