Can't get the white out
When I was a lad, I lived for some time in Miami, Florida. Not the cool Miami Vice mansion and nightclub Miami, the mixed race, hippie infested, drug zone Miami. It was home and I was a happy little BC.

One of my best friends was a lad I'll call J. who was black. We played all the time, rode bikes, fished in the canals, climbed coconut trees, stole citrus fruit from neighbors trees and generally had a good time.

One time we were playing in the yard and went inside his house for a drink because it was hot and humid. He asked his mom for a drink and she looked at me, then at him and said, "I donno about giving him a drink. I'm not sure the dishwasher can get the white out." At the time, this seemed perfectly reasonable. Who was I to so boldly affect their fine plastic verre with my white germs?

So, we went out and had a drink from the hose. Now when I look back I feel really sorry for that family.
( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 15:24, 7 replies)

I know
imagine being black?
( Mockingbird Practitioner of SCIENCE, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 15:28, closed)

I've always lived places where I was the minority - I have imagined it many times.

( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 15:29, closed)

I was being irreverently silly
with racist overtones.

That said, I've lived in places where I was clearly a racial minority, but it never occurred to me until years later. Possibly because everyone was being a twat to one another regardless of race.
( Mockingbird Practitioner of SCIENCE, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 15:31, closed)

That's what I've discovered
There are jackasses in every creed, color and religion. You put up with some and Nerf dart the others.
( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 15:40, closed)

What an awful thing to say to a child
or anyone really.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 15:28, closed)

Nasty...
I hope your mate didn't pick that bit of baggage up
(micmac is happy as a pig in shite, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 21:57, closed)

Probably. Last thing he said to me was that he was going to kill me.
I was seven, he was 10 and he stole $50 from a dresser in my house. I did the unpardonable thing of telling my mom, when asked, that yes, we had been playing in that room. She called his mom, his mom found him suddenly possessed of $50, and he decided I should be killed. As far as I know the fatwa still exists, so I hang with Salmon Rushdie.
( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Thu 1 Apr 2010, 22:26, closed)