I said a lot of stupid racist stuff when I was a KID.

[MrGrieves]

(I apologize for spelling out some very horrible language in this story about myself as a kid.)

I would like to think that I had no idea what I was saying, how hurtful it was, or even what it meant. And for the most part I didn’t other than I knew it wasn’t “right” to categorize people. Sadly it wasn’t until I was in 8th grade that I realized how stupid I was. I lived on the east side of Saint Paul in the 80’s. This was an area that had recently had many Hmong immigrants. And it was VERY blue collar and had MANY veterans that lived there. Terms like gooks chinks and other things were learned behavior that were used. The thing is that I didn’t have any animosity to them. I was friends with almost all of them. But I was engrained to using this disgusting insulting language. I also went to a school where we had autistic kids in the school. As you can imagine hateful things like retard were common. But we interacted, knew them, shared story time and again there was no hate or animosity. We were dumbass kids that SHOULD have known better, but our social environment failed us.

In 8th grade I moved to a different school in a different part of the city and met a friend who heard me casually use one of these insults. And he tore into for it. At first I was shocked at how wrong he said I was, but then the light bulb went on I KNEW I was wrong. Really wrong. I don’t know why it took someone shaking me to wake me up. I wasn’t someone that didn’t befriend so,done because they were a different race or because of any other physical appearance. I absolutely adored MLK’s message. My parents were not racist, but there was this awful language that we just... learned.

As a father now I am constantly thinking back to my childhood and I am hawk like in watching for that creeping into my kids lives. Admittedly where I live we are in a bubble,. Affluent, very white, and insanely privileged. I grew up hating the people where I live now...known as cake eater land (Edina for fellow MN DUers) My kids understand that we live in a bubble. They understand what white privilege is, even as I am still striving to understand my privilege every day. But they are growing up in a different time too. There is plenty of hate. There is all the same hurtful language out there and more. But they don’t seem to let it seep into their vernacular or how they look at people. I hope it is because I am doing a good job parenting but I also think that even though there is still hate, that we are creating a better social environment for kids to grow up in. I have to hope for that.

In light of the news that has come out in VA I just had to think back about how I was a stupid foul mouthed insulting shit. but I was a stupid impressionable kid that was around a lot of bad insulting language that I didn’t really fully understand. That is a far ways from being a 25 year old educated person who should have long since come to grips with their own stupidity and to become comfortable talking about it and finding some way to underscore why that made you a better person today. The fact that he didn’t do that leaves me wondering if he ever did really learn anything from his own actions.

[912gdm]

1. would you be comfortable with the Covington Catholic twit using that in 20 year?

[MrGrieves]

2. No I am not comfortable with it

I believe that kid had a sense of entitlement and wanted Nathan Phillips to feel like he was inferior. But I also think his social environment is failing him and continues to do so judging by his parents trying to whitewash and rehab their kids reputation. We can only really hope that kid wakes the fuck up or someone influential in his life has an impact.

[912gdm]

3. then how would you explain the Governor?

the photo was when he was pre-med after graduating as and undergrad. he was 25, covington twit is 18. one wore total blackface, the other wore a hat.



could it be possible that you are able to filter some things as ok and others as totally unacceptable based on perceptions?

[MrGrieves]

4. I am not ok with either of them

The governor was a 25 yr old educated man he should have known better. And he should have known to address this.

[912gdm]

5. then why your op

[MrGrieves]

7. I felt like I needed to write it down.

I like to talk about it because it helps me to understand myself, which is what Northam would have been doing if he was truly sorry.

I want to make one thing clear I didn’t write it to excuse me or the civington kid or Northam. There is a lot of reflecting back on “back then it was common” in a few posts, and it was. But it was wrong and people of a certain age should have known better. I should have known better long before I was in 8th grade!

[rusty quoin]

6. Yeah. 25 back then, you were responsible for your actions. I was.

[pnwmom]

8. And I lived in VA a few years earlier. Anyone I knew would have condemned that. n/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. Thank you for sharing that.

But I'm genuinely appalled that as late as the 1980s you somehow felt that language was okay. Where the fuck were your parents? Or did they use such language?

I'm a generation older, and I recall in the 1950s and into the 1960s names an racial appellations being used that by the 1970s I knew were wrong.

For all of you reading this, I'll recommend the movie "Only the Lonely" with John Candy and Maureen O'Hara. She uses racial epithets in that movie in a way that accurately portrays the older generation (older to me, as in my parents) which even by then (and the movie came out in 1991) was clearly no longer acceptable. I will add that such language is only a minor part of the movie, and as I recall, simply helps set the generational divide. It is also my take on the movie that her character represents Irish Americans of that era, and as all my grandparents came from Ireland I found it completely convincing. All my aunts and uncles talked like her. Except they and their language and attitudes would have been some twenty years earlier, so while I found I understood and even in a certain way identified with her, there was a temporal disconnect.

Also, I recall very clearly when I was told that there was a new way to do eeny-meeny-miny-moe. It was probably 1959, maybe as late as 1961, but it was somehow crystal clear that what you grabbed was a tiger, not what we'd been saying all along. At least in my small circle of friends in northern New York State, the change was made completely and without question.

I do want to say it's good you rather quickly learned how you were wrong. But it's genuinely disheartening to me to be reminded of how long such attitudes have persisted.

[MrGrieves]

10. Yeah I am pretty appalled too

And that’s why I said our social environment failed us. I was from a divorced home so I wasn’t with my mom but every other weekend and it wasn’t like we made a point of talking like that or anything. my parents grew up with the concept that it was better for different people to live in different neighborhoods. like the Italian neighborhoods and the polish neighborhoods etc. Like there was nostalgia for them because they had this community even if they didn’t realize how limiting it was for them or worse how limiting it was for others. Or maybe they did. All I know is that today they don’t have those feelings. heck my Dad just left his church because his church wouldn’t let one of his wife’s students speak at her funeral because she was Muslim. But my parents know they were wrong. they will admit to being wrong and that is important. At least it is to me.

Yes Eenie meanie miney moe was still said the horrible way when I was a kid. We also had a game of dodgeball called smear the queer if you can believe that. Just completely screwed up. Stupid, ignorant, and systemic.

[Laffy Kat]

11. I grew up in Memphis and although my parents were not "woke" they were sensitive.

One of my first memories was getting my mouth washed out with soap for using the N-word in front of my folks. This had to be when I was around four or five, sooo, 1962 or '63. I didn't understand what I was saying, I was simply repeating something I'd heard, but I sure got the lesson. I can still remember the tastes of the Ivory soap. And Northam took those photos over 20 years later?

[orleans]

12. i feel like i can't make a judgement with this northam guy

first -- i know nothing about him except this

second -- i live in illinois--just outside of chicago. i've always lived here.

i know that i wouldn't find that acceptable behavior for MY governor--even if it was 30 yrs ago
i know that thirty years ago if someone had worn blackface to a party they would have been kicked out (and shunned)
i know that when i was a *kid* that was unacceptable (i'm a year older than him)
i know that when i was twenty five my friends and i would have called him a fucking asshole for doing that

but i didn't grow up or live in virginia

i remember i was shocked to learn robert byrd had been in the kkk

i don't know--i feel i can't make a call on this one.

[crazytown]

13. Did you vote for W in 2000 and 2004?

It’s not worth going to the wall for an ex GOPer. Ralph Northam is no Al Franken.