My Experiences With Race, Gender, Religion, and Social Class

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As the youngest sibling of nine, I am actually closer in age to my brothers' and sisters' children than I am to them. This has often been a blessing but it has also created a distance between my siblings and myself that I suppose may never completely disappear.
My earliest memory of racism comes from my father and grandfather and most of the other males in the family. I grew up hearing things like 'that old nigger boy' or 'nothing but a bunch of pickininnies' or 'they're nothing but wetbacks.' I can remember repeating some of these words and phrases in play when I was not much older than three or four, and being scolded shamefully by my mother and grandmother. None of the women in my family spoke like this. They never used those words, and instilled in me the shame of ever using them. And this is a point that brings me to genders.
Mine was a very male dominated family. The older women in the family knew only children and cooking, and their bible of course. The men ...

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him and a black woman, who also had just given birth, would come by several times a day to nurse him. One would think that this would have given him a less biased view, but it seemed to have no effect on his ironic philosophy that blacks were inferior intellectually and morally. Family members have told me stories through the years about how outraged he was when the 'colored' signs were taken down from public bathrooms and drinking fountains.

School Years.

Fortunately for me, my father had outgrown his use of racist slang by the time I was old enough to attend school. Times had changed. We were living in Florida and were hundreds of miles and states away from my grandparents ...

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