Australia set to recognise Aborigines as first people of continent

[EFerrari]

20. I tried to buy a house in Albany, CA, in the late 80s.

My kids were in school there because I'd been in UC student housing. It was at that time a white enclave. In the process of trying to buy that house (which I was unable to do, finally) I found out how Albany stayed white while all around it there were black communities.

In Albany, a date was set for the realtors to present their offers on a property en masse. The bids were sealed and no one knew what or who they were bidding against. That was "just the way it was done". My mom, who is visibly Latina and has an accent where I'm not and don't, acted as my agent. Both of us were too busy at the time to really understand what was happening. She was commuting up there from her own commercial RE business to help me out and I was teaching, in grad school with two young teens. But looking back, it was a complete waste of time to send my little brown mum into that situation. As it happened, I bought a house in a great mixed Berkeley neighborhood instead but it was hard on my kids who had to change schools -- which is the apocalypse for 13 year olds.