''Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money.....

[phylny]

19. This was the way people talked for years - exactly the way my now-deceased grandmother used to

talk about people. She was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1909. She would never admit she was racist or bigoted, but her first question about someone would be, "What nationality are you?" You could never be American, always had to go back to where "your people" were from. Her own parents were from Italy and experienced bigotry, but of course, why learn from that experience? Years, later, when my mom and dad moved out of Brooklyn to Long Island, a neighbor lamented that "dirty Italians" were moving in across the street.

Somehow, my own mother wasn't racist or bigoted - and she was a registered Democrat. My father didn't appear to be racist until he started watching Fox News, and while he's not overtly racist, he's nonetheless racist. Hates Obama, we don't talk politics. Talks about "the Orientals" next door. Oh, the horror - they're all med students, for crying out loud. Yeah, ruined the neighborhood.

Getting back to my grandmother, she used to say, "We have everything in our family. We even have a Black" (her nephew's wife). We'd all cringe.

The cycle was broken with my mother, me, and my brothers.