Quote:
Originally Posted by Grumbler
A good friend of mine, who happens to be Spanish, helped me ride my two motorcycles from San Jose, CA to Boise, ID back in the summer of 2002 (I moved my family here). We decided to have breakfast at the local IHOP the next morning. Every single person in that restaurant was white except for him. It was almost surreal as California is such a diverse state compared to Idaho. He lives near Yuba City, CA.
However, none of the other customers nor the servers seemed to care that he looked hispanic. It's more about *who* you are than *what* you are. Boise is more diverse now than it was 7-years ago. If people can't accept you for what you are then it's their loss, not yours.
BTW, my college sweetheart was an absolutely stunning and brilliant Italian woman with olive skin. She has a PhD in education. Both of us were very secure people, and that's how we projected ourselves.
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I understand where you're coming from. However, it has little to do with how white the populace is. It is how educated and how many other important and better things those respective people have to think about than the fact that a brown girl just walked into the store. I've been to many towns around eastern rural North Carolina, been the only non-white person there, and felt completely at home.
My father was a physics PhD himself. There were definitely times he was discriminated against, and sometimes even more so because he resembled a middle eastern man due to some spanish jewish lineage in the family. And he learned to take it in stride which is extremely admirable. That is something I am slowly learning to do. I think I should get a Phd just for the shock factor of telling a racist that no, not all Hispanic people are of the same nationality nor are exactly alike.
Ultimately, I feel that the racism stems from the high volume of Mexican underclass all throughout the state, which irks me since this is a fight that has nothing to do with me since I am neither Mexican nor in a lower socioeconomic class. I'm an assimilated Latina girl walking around speaking fluent english wearing Wilco shirts, so clearly it's the color of my skin that is setting people off. Thanks to city-data, I've been able to find a few other threads where people list pretty shocking acts of racism and prejudice towards all nationalities of Hispanic people throughout the state, so things are coming into view a bit better. The simple human brain naturally seeks to look for simple patterns, so there is really nothing I can do about this area than bear with it until my boyfriend re-enlists elsewhere. I just hope this thread helps to inform someone else. Knowing how warped people's minds are, I'm sure this thread will encourage racists to move there even. So it's a win-win situation.
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