In which I fail to grasp bigotry
Back in the 80s, my English teacher was on a mission against prejudice of all kinds. All the books she had us read touched on it in some way or another.

One book we studied was The Great Gilly Hopkins. A fostered white girl lives next door to a blind black guy, from whom she steals some money. Her foster mother finds out and makes her apologise. She hates being forced to be friendly with "the type of person she'd been brought up not to have anything to do with".

I remember marvelling at this, thinking, "why on Earth would you bring someone up not to associate with blind people!?"

(I lived in Somerset, where I'd set eyes on (I think) five non-white people by the age of 15. I was blissfully unaware of the concept of racism.)
( teedyay, Mon 25 Feb 2013, 12:33, 3 replies)

I spent the first few years of my life in 'Cosmopolitan' South London.
Before moving to an incredibly white town.

I remember a day at the park when an Ice cream van pulled up and the driver was black. It would appear that this was the first time that such an individual had been seen by some of the children there as the rest of playtime was devoted to deciding whether the black had come of him and into the vanilla ice cream, turning it into chocolate, or he'd spent so much time around chocolate Ice cream that it had made his skin go brown.

Even as a four year old I thought they were 'silly idiots'.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Mon 25 Feb 2013, 13:51, closed)

Confused by the unfamiliar, when they have an insufficient understanding of human biology to correctly understand what they are seeing?
Man, children are thick.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 25 Feb 2013, 14:13, closed)

yer so which one was it?
(Isitjustme, Mon 25 Feb 2013, 15:07, closed)