Not at all. I grew up in a small WASPy suburban town from when I was about seven on. There were like maybe three black people, slightly more Asians, and that was about it. I was one of the only nonwhites (I’m S. Asian). Fun times.
I’m a white male in my 60s. Growing up in England and Australia I really did not have much contact with non-white people in my neighbourhoods, because they weren’t there. The first time that I had regular contact was when I went to university, and then it was with international students.
Though I should qualify that a little. My father has done some research into our family history, and there’s a gap: his mother was illegitimate, and it seems likely that his grandfather (whose identity is completely unknown) was Chinese living on the goldfields of Victoria. So I’m probably 1/8 Chinese, and throughout my childhood I was in constant contact with someone who was 1/4 Chinese. However, of course, I didn’t know that at the time.
Until I turned 13, we lived in a working-class suburb that was 100% white and 99% Catholic or Protestant. We were one of the few Jewish families, and yes there was anti-Semitism. Then we moved to a middle-class suburb that was about 33% Jewish, but still lily-white. Briefly, in 8th grade, there was one Black kid in the school. He had some serious behavioral problems, and was expelled in his first week. I didn’t know any non-white kids until I went to college.
That was all a long time ago. That first suburb is now 100% Black, and the second is now 95% Black.
How the hell did I put it in CS in the first place?
Probably the doing of those farking Welshmen. Or maybe the pandas. I forget which I’m at war with this week.
Born in 1960 and lived my 1st 18 years on the NW side of Chicago. NEighborhood was 100% white, as was my grade school until they bussed in a couple of “special ed” students of color. I knew one jewish guy. Nearly everyone was Catholic, with Lutherans the biggest minority.
The racial dividing line was North Ave - approx 2 miles S of my house. S of North was black, N of it was white. Most folk in my neighborhood were of Polish and Italian descent.
I went to a HS outside of my neighborhood that drew from the entire north side. Ran track, and became tight with many blacks and hispanics. Then when I went to college at U of I it seemed the races self-segregated again.
Now my old neighborhood is nearly 100% hispanic.
I grew up in a very irish-catholic section of Philadelphia. There was a housing project about a mile away with blacks, but at my catholic grade school and high school there were 0 minorities in any grade level. We used to joke about how the Italians were the minorities.
I still find it strange when I find out friends aren’t Catholic. Just wasn’t exposed to that at all.
I’m 32 and black. Grew up in Atlanta, GA.
Elementary and middle school was probably 50% white, between it serving a community of immigrants–mostly Asian (Vietnamese and Koreans were common), Mexicans, and Indians–and us black kids being bussed in from the southside.
High school was about 60% black, 35% white, and 5% other. Probably because by the time the white kids got to high school, their parents would put them in private schools (for instance, you’d hear that so-and-so was at a private school nearby or that they’d been shipped off to military school). For some reason, the ethnic diversity of elementary/middle school didn’t seem so apparent in high school. I remember a lot of my immigrant classmates moving out of the city in the interim between elementary school and middle school, so that might explain why.
Church was 99.9% black. I remember one white guy who attended somewhat regularly. so he was the .1%.
It wasn’t until college that I experience the true minority experience.
Hm. Well, I lived in San Francisco until I was eight. I guess my neighborhood was majority white, but I certainly saw plenty of people of every ethnic group imaginable on a daily basis. My school was also majority white, although a lot of people were first or second generation immigrants from other countries. I had classmates from France, Iceland, and Italy that I can recall, plus friends whose parents were from Norway and Britain.
When I was eight, my family moved to a suburb that’s about 80% white, 15% Latino, and 5% everyone else. My (public) school was probably of a similar distribution. My family didn’t attend religious services.
23-year-old white female, grew up in a small town (population around 5,000) on the east coast of the Scottish Highlands.
In my class there was one kid who was Scottish with Bangladeshi parents, and another Scottish boy with Pakistani parents. In my high school of around 1,200 pupils there were less than 10 kids total from different ethnic backgrounds and not a single black African or Caribbean child.
The two council housing schemes I grew up on had no ethnic diversity… no diversity at all actually.
I never went to church so can’t really answer that one, but given the 5 kids I knew with different ethnic backgrounds had practicing Muslim parents my guess is that diversity amounted to the square root of fuck all. We didn’t even have the sectarianism (Catholic vs Protestant) that is still prevalent in parts of Scotland.
I grew up as a military brat. My parents still wanted us to have some stability so my father extended tours and volunteered for tours etc. that would keep is in one place for as long as possible, so I grew up mainly in Germany, but with a few short tours stateside to Texas, California, and South Carolina there was also 18 months of Turkey and 18 months of Arizona in there somewhere but that was when I was too young to remember clearly. Being military and being (mostly) overseas we were exposed to much ethnic diversity.
I remember living in an apartment building in Berlin where we were the only white family in the stairwell and our neighbors were all from someplace else, I don’t think any two were of the same ethnic origin. It made for great parties with Korean/Philippine/Russian/Jewish/African American/Hispanic/German themes. 
ETA: Forgot to add 37 year old, white, female.
I’m white and Jewish from Long Island. There were very few Jewish families in my home town; I was the first Jewish male to graduate from my high school since my father.
We had a senior class of 130. Three were Jewish and three were black (two brothers were brothers). I’d guess about 50% or more were Catholic, mostly Polish. But it wasn’t a very ethnic area. I was still from a time when you didn’t make a big deal of your ethnic group.
I am 60, grew up in Portland, Oregon. Our house was one house away from a street that was a racial dividing line. On our side, all white (I am white, by the way). On the other side, mixed white and black. My grade school was 100% white until one Japanese-American family moved into the area and sent their 2 kids there. Since Jews have been mentioned, I’ll add that there were a fair number of Jews in the school, among whom were most of my friends.
High school, on the other hand, was more mixed. A fair number of blacks, some asians, and (from what I recall) almost no latinos.
The church I went to when I was in grade school was, to the best of my memory, all white. I didn’t go to church after the 7th grade.
Roddy
I grew up in Seattle area suburbs.
The area and my school at the time were approximately 85% white, 13% asian/pacific islander (mostly Chinese and Japanese), and 2% “other.”
The church I grew up in was part of a denomination founded by Swedish immigrants. It was more white than the surrounding neighborhood.
Me: black, mid-30s, female.
Port Huron, Michigan through my first year of high school. Until high school, non-white minorities were so insignificant that I honestly don’t remember any, ever. Also, we usually figured only in terms of white and black, and so I’m certain there must have been some hispanic kids, but they were “white” and so I don’t remember any distinctions, there. I do remember some surnames that were hispanic. Also the same goes for the (American-) Indian kids.
For my first year of high school, there were finally some blacks, because there were feeder schools from the black neighborhoods south of where we lived. Hard to estimate a percentage after all of these years. Maybe 3 to 5 percent? The other high school that served the end of town south of the river was significantly blacker; maybe up to 15 or 20%. Let’s see what Wikipedia says: 7.74% black in the city limits, most of them concentrated in the south, and so, yeah, 15% to 20% seems like a safe bet.
When we moved to East Detroit, well, let’s just say that the city changed its name to “Eastpointe” primary due to its racist attitudes. There was one black kid, and he was only there because he used a fake address and wanted to play basketball. Some administrator followed him home one day, and blew it for him. He was a darned good rapper (and I hate rap), and a good friend. That sucked. Also notable were people that I’m guessing were Vietnamese boat people. Not a whole lot of them – maybe 10 – but they were notable for being so different.
Never had a black teacher. Only ever had one black neighbor, in my previous house, and the rest of his household was white. (I’m not counting my time in the military for neighborhoods.) Even today in my current neighborhood, the only minority is my Latina wife. I tell her to keep a low profile because she’ll destroy everyone’s property values. Then I tell her I’m kidding, and tell her the true story of how when blacks start to move in, property values tank.
48 year white here. Grew up in a suburb of Rochester, NY.
My neighborhood and church were about as WASPy as you could get. You had to into The City (cue ominous music) to see any black people. In school there were always a few blacks, a couple of Asian Americans, and the occasional Jew. Except for an exchange student from Brazil, I don’t think I met a Hispanic person until I moved to Boston.
As for subgroups of whites, Italian Americans dominated. Funnily enough, teachers could never pronounce their last names.
100% white. I did not see a person of any other race except shopping in Cleveland, and my aunt’s maid, until junior high school when there was a boy whose mother was Japanese. About 10 years ago I invited a (black) co-worker who liked to garden to come over to my house to take come cuttings from my plants. When he arrived, I went out to greet him, he petted my dog for a minute, and then I went back in the house while he took his plants. Almost immediately my phone rang and it was my next-door neighbor asking if I was “all right.” :rolleyes:
She’s dead now.
Not mixed at all. I grew up in a Coloured suburb of Cape Town, and there were *only *Coloureds in it, per government mandate. My High School did have some Indians(who were basically at the same “level” as Coloureds for Apartheid purposes) and a couple of Chinese (who were legally Coloured). I’m in my late 30s.
White female here, born in 1970, lived in Southern CA all my life.
I don’t believe I ever went to a school that had a distinct ethnic majority. Depending on where exactly I was (grew up in Riverside, then moved to Glendale for a couple years, then back to Riverside, then to Long Beach from 5th grade forward), the proportions changed, but there were always a lot of whites, Latinos(mostly Mexican), east Asians of various types (Cambodian, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, fewer Chinese and occasional Japanese) and blacks. Except for Junior High, where I was in a program that bussed me to a different neighborhood, blacks were usually like 10-15% of a given school’s population. (Jr High they were more like 33-45%.)
My friends were mostly white, with some Asian & Latino. Black kids mostly wanted to just be friends with other black kids, it seemed to me at the time.
One of the things that amazed me when I went to New Orleans as an adult was the fact that there were only black and white people. It was REALLY WEIRD. I’m so used to seeing faces in various shades of brown, but there were hardly any.
Oni no Husband (half white, half Filipino) and I both think that our current neighborhood (in Pasadena) is way too white. We miss the more vibrant feel of a more ethnically diverse neighborhood - we even miss being woken up by the neighbors banda music. When we buy our house, it’s definitely going to be someplace with some color to it.
Edit: My family doesn’t go to church, so I don’t know about that.
45, white, grew up in southern California.
My neighborhood was mostly white–the only people I can remember who weren’t white were Hispanic/Mexican–one family a few doors up from us that I didn’t have much to do with because, while their kids were fairly nice, the dad was a bit of a psycho and was rumored to shoot neighborhood cats. The other family lived up the street and I was pretty good friends with one of their sons.
No black people in our neighborhood, but then again my home town was overwhelmingly white/Hispanic. I think there were only three black people in my school and two of them were siblings. There weren’t many Asians either–I can only remember three (again, two were siblings, and the other one was my junior high boyfriend).
I do remember one story my mom still tells, though–when I was pretty young (I’d guess maybe 7 or 8) the house across the street had a guy come in to do some work for them–he was black, and he brought his two sons who happened to be about my age. In fairly short order, the three of us were playing in the house’s yard–until some nosy neighbor called my mother and told her I was playing with two strange black boys. Yeah, my hometown wasn’t exactly the most racially tolerant, at least the white-bread-suburbia part of it, even though it’s known to be an upscale hippie hotbed. At least I’m happy to know I didn’t catch it.
32, white, Cleveland, OH.
My neighborhood was mostly recent-immigrant Hispanics and Italians, with a fair number of Americanized whites and a few blacks. My church (Roman Catholic) was much the same, but with a larger showing of Irish, and we’ve recently gained a fair number of African immigrants. Schooling through 8th grade was all at public schools, and majority black. 9th grade at one Catholic high school was nearly pure vanilla white, while 10th-12th grade at a different Catholic school was about as racially and ethnically mixed as you can imagine.