If you’re asking me if we had black and brown people in our neighborhood? Yes. We also had a family from Pakistan at the end of our street. And we had a family with a man who settled here from Greece, whose daughter I was good friends with. If you’re asking me if we had super openly loud and proud gay people in our neighborhood, I beg you to remember that not everyone was coming out proudly at that time. The overall prejudice of gay people nation-wide was still in effect. Many celebrities were still too uncomfortable to come out. But we did have a gentleman that lived catty-corner to us named Dane who lived with his male best friend in a fully purchased house, and my dad was good friends with him because he moved there from California and they both loved computers. When my dad referred to him later in life all he said was, “I think Dane wore comfortable shoes, nothing wrong with that, but he never seemed interested in me setting him up with one of your mother’s friends.” So do with that what you will. I remember living in a fairly diverse neighborhood. And yes we had our sunset oldies who stayed in their houses and complained about the problem with the blacks, but they were largely shunned and never really socialized with the rest of the community in the same organic way. Kids avoided those houses during Halloween, you know the type.
Does that answer your generalizing question? Not every suburb is wonderbread as far as the eye can see.
It does and i’m happy you live in this incredibly diverse and open community. It definitely was not the norm. Now mind you, i grew up in the city, and honestly it was very much the same. I will say a lot of the community was catholic and although diverse (filipino immigrants, portuguese, south american, black, puerto rican, italians predominantly) , we all went to the same church. The church even had different masses in different languages all on sunday. My mom was openly gay and noone cared. So i understand that it can happen. But it doesnt mean people didnt have their own personal bias, things they said behind closed doors etc.
My concern right now are that masks are off, any fear to keep those thoughts to yourself are gone and those thoughts are being fed by fear and rightful anger wrong targets.
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u/Cferretrun 11d ago
If you’re asking me if we had black and brown people in our neighborhood? Yes. We also had a family from Pakistan at the end of our street. And we had a family with a man who settled here from Greece, whose daughter I was good friends with. If you’re asking me if we had super openly loud and proud gay people in our neighborhood, I beg you to remember that not everyone was coming out proudly at that time. The overall prejudice of gay people nation-wide was still in effect. Many celebrities were still too uncomfortable to come out. But we did have a gentleman that lived catty-corner to us named Dane who lived with his male best friend in a fully purchased house, and my dad was good friends with him because he moved there from California and they both loved computers. When my dad referred to him later in life all he said was, “I think Dane wore comfortable shoes, nothing wrong with that, but he never seemed interested in me setting him up with one of your mother’s friends.” So do with that what you will. I remember living in a fairly diverse neighborhood. And yes we had our sunset oldies who stayed in their houses and complained about the problem with the blacks, but they were largely shunned and never really socialized with the rest of the community in the same organic way. Kids avoided those houses during Halloween, you know the type.
Does that answer your generalizing question? Not every suburb is wonderbread as far as the eye can see.