I get the jest of your question; however, I agree with another person who posted that the manner of your question is flawed.
I was born in 1954, grew up south of Kansas City, MO, and spent every summer in south-central Missouri. I say this for a reason. The town I grew up in was 99% white, and we only had six families that were black. There were no Hispanics, Jews, or Asians living there. To make matters worse, my adoptive parents were highly racist, bigoted, narcissistic/sociopathic, homophobic, and judgmental over everything that was not like them.
Delilah was a Methodist and barely tolerated anyone who was not Methodist.
Ray was Pentecostal, and although they never discussed religion, why they stayed married is beyond me.
My sister and I could have friends at school, even the Black kids, but they were not welcome in our home. My parents hated Catholics, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormons. I was raised on white privilege and taught to turn anyone different than me away. I was fed that crap for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.
The Black families in town were good people; all their kids were active in sports, yet to Ray and Delilah, they were beneath them. Even a person’s financial worth was essential to them. If you were poor, then you were not worth their time.
Ray was against Asians because he fought in WWII against the Japanese, and he did not trust them, and he made his prejudice very well known.
Delilah, well, she was a bitch, no matter how you slice it. She had been a teacher, was partial to girls, and would rarely punish female students; however, the boys were fair game, and their punishments were usually quite severe. Parents never said anything back then. That was evident because my twin sister was rarely punished, while I got the shit beat out of me whenever Delilah was pissed off about something.
The area of South-Central Missouri where Ray and Delilah were from and where all the relatives lived was an entirely white county. When the sheriff of the county, after the Civil War, instituted the “sundowner law,” where no Blacks were allowed in the county after dark, or they would be lynched. Delilah’s father was a sheriff of the same county and enforced the law. Could there have been lynchings that went unreported and unmarked graves scattered around the county? It would not surprise me.
The one thing that was very prominent in all the areas I grew up in was homophobia, not just in those two areas but in the entire state. You have to realize Missouri is a deep-red state, and if you are a Democrat, you are not looked well on. When I was discovered to be gay in 1970 by Delilah, she damn near beat me to death. She outed me to the entire family. I was threatened with arrest, prison, mental institution, or death if I acted on my “perversion” as they saw it. So I buried it.
Ray and Delilah hated my wife and her family because they were poor, claiming that her marrying me would give her access to their money. Do you believe that shit? They also hated it when my wife and I became Mormon. We moved away from them.
Everything I have said can be taken from many places, not just where I grew up. Would I want to live in a place that was so defined by those rigid rules? Been there, done that.
Besides, if you look at my photo, you might think that I come from a white heritage. You would be wrong. My biological mother was of English and Irish ancestry. My biological father, his father (grandpa), was full Chickasaw Native American, while grandma was Scottish and Welsh.
This is a photo of my twin sister and me. My sister has dark skin, dark brown eyes, and naturally straight hair (although it was curled in this photo), and I have fair skin, blue eyes, and curly hair. My sister Tans, I go out in the sun and am as red as our clothes. I burn like a lobster.
If you have the time, I would like you to go onto YouTube and search for “The Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Experiment” by Ms. Jane Elliott. My sister and I lived it, having those two eye colors. Yet it is a lesson on racism or any other “ism” you want to interject there.
In closing, to the wrong person, your question could be seen as racist. I do not believe you meant it that way. Why do we have to identify someone by the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation, or nationality? There is only one race on this earth, and that is human. I was not born racist; I was indoctrinated with it, and I am the one who chose to keep it out of my life.
After my beloved wife of forty years died in 2015, I openly came out as gay. A gentleman came up to wait at the San Bernardino, CA, bus stop. We got to talking, and he asked me if I was gay. I said yes. He asked me if I had ever been with a Black man. I said no. He asked if I was racist. I, again, said no. He asked me why not. I replied that no one had ever asked me because no one seemed interested in a sixty-plus, legally blind man who was gay. He asked if I would go out with a Black man. I surprised him when I replied, “Are you asking?” He said no, he was straight. There you go.
I met and married my husband a little over five years after my wife’s death. Is he Black? No, he’s a ginger. He is also eleven years younger than me, and I will be seventy in a couple of months.
Be careful how you word your questions because they could be taken the wrong way by some people.
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