re: #145 oaktree

I grew up in a small, white, town in the northeast. My exposure to other cultures was limited to history class in school and what I saw on the nightly news (mainly stories about scary black gangs and murders in black neighborhoods and those that were murders involving whites were reported without the ZOMG factor).

I moved to L.A. when I was 18, hopped a greyhound and rode cross country. Really, I never looked back and one of the best things to happen was the challenging of my past cultural pre-conceptions. In my town the local sheriff/mayor tried to convince everyone that the town was going to be like big scary “Los Angeles” with its gangs and violence and it would be us kids causing trouble. Of course that never happened, the point was the stereotyping of L.A. in everyone’s mind.

The same went for racial prejudice and stereo-typing. Hell my grandparents thought black people were black because that was the proverbial mark of Cain! It was just that sad.

So I came here, met people of all ethnicities and backgrounds and races and I am better for it. I still have to point out to family and other back there that not all arabic people are evil anti-semites, or that not all black people carry guns out here and blah-blah-blah.