Australia set to recognise Aborigines as first people of continent

[hunter]

15. I grew up in a city that was more than 99% white.

This wasn't accomplished by restrictive covenants, sundown laws, or anything like that. It was all under the table, wink-and-nod crap.

Apartment owners and landlords simply didn't rent to "Negroes or Mexicans" it was unwritten, and unremarked. People who were not white couldn't get loans to buy houses. Restaurants would hide non-white families away in the corner and give them poor service. The police would harass "suspicious" people, meaning anyone who wasn't white. Driving or walking while black (DWB) enforcement was a major police activity. We had neighbors who would call the police if they saw a black guy walking down the street, and the police would show up to interrogate that person, demand to know what they were doing there, etc. If you were Mexican you'd best be holding a leaf blower or a vacuum cleaner if you didn't want trouble.

I went to one high school reunion (that's all I could take) and quite a few people told me straight up, without shame or embarrassment, that they'd left our hometown or California entirely, because their were too many Mexicans now. Most astonishingly, they don't consider themselves to be racist. I think that's why the South takes such a bashing, because the South was more explicit in their racism, and the white suburbanites in our community could claim they weren't like that. After all, anyone, black or white, could use a public drinking fountain.

I fled my home town and have lived my entire adult life in communities with diverse populations, mostly in places where white guys like me are the minority. When I visit places that are entirely white it feels creepy, like I can just hear the Twilight Zone theme music playing in the background, like people are missing somehow, that they've been sucked into another dimension, yet the people remaining somehow don't notice...