Cultural appropriation. Bogus issue. Get real.
Steven List,
Bristol, PA
75 year old WASP, originally from Cincinnati
I’m filling in my blind spots.
William Bullard,
Bristol, RI
I grew up in mostly white communities and joined and retired after 30 years from a U.S. Navy Officer Corps that still largely looks like me and reflects my life experience as a white male. It almost goes without saying that I have never experienced discrimination or marginalization because of who or what I am. It was easy and comfortable for me to believe as long as I was fair to all and upheld well-intentioned (and required) policies preventing racial discrimination that I was doing enough. In reality, all I did was give myself permission to succeed in an organization where I felt no pressure to be anything other than what I am while not considering any of my fellow Sailors who felt that pressure.
I’m grateful to the Black woman and fellow officer who made me aware of this “blind spot” in the months before I retired; I am correcting my vision as a chart my new course in life.
“You’re Hispanic?,” he said. “Prove it!”
Irmie S.
Bristol, CT
I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. Both of my parents were from Puerto Rico but were of Spanish ancestry, which caused my fair, freckle-prone skin. I looked so different from so many of my caramel-skinned classmates. So, in Junior High School, when one Puerto Rican boy began teasing all the white kids, it wasn’t long before his eyes landed on me. Not wanting to be a target of ridicule because no one wants to be the “white kid”, I told him I wasn’t white. “I’m Puerto Rican!” “No you’re not! You’re Hispanic? Prove it!” So I quickly said the first thing that came to mind in Spanish. “Que quieres que te diga?” (What do you want me to say to you?) I suddenly earned a new friend and protector for the remainder of the school year, even amid the saddened looks from the white kids who looked so much like me.
Will you still talk to me?
Susan Duncan,
Bristol, NH.
When I was in the fourth grade, my family moved from Concord, North Carolina, to Leaksville (now Eden), North Carolina. Our street, Patrick Street, was parallel to Henry Street and the dividing line between the “white” neighborhood and the black/African-American neighborhood. Our next door neighbor, Miss Mary, had a large yard and kids would gather to play ball. Even though this was the late 1950’s, our ball team was mixed with both black and white kids. We just played ball. One day, one of the young men asked me: “Susan, when we are able to someday go to school together, will you still talk to me?” This was absolutely a defining question of my young life — even though at the time, I had no idea whatsoever of the significance of the question. I was in high school in another town when North Carolina schools were finally integrated. My senior class of 333 students had 3 black students! I have so often thought of this young man: what did he go on to become in life? did he even survive the south of the 1960’s and the Vietnam war? It haunts me that I do not remember his name. But I so remember his question to me.
