“Isn’t it a shame we aren’t all atheists so we could just love each other like Christians?” 
What about “dark skinned” instead of “black”?
As for me, my moment came when I was in 6th grade (I’m thinking that’s about 11 years old). We had a substitute teacher in one of my classes. This dark-skinned gentleman, named Mr. Kennedy, was a very theatrical type - I found his manner of speaking to be very entertaining, and was really enjoying his over-the-top presence.
Trying to make light of his appearance, I said to a friend, “I guess he’s the black sheep of the Kennedy clan.” Looking back, it wasn’t funny, and the metaphor was almost certainly misplaced. But I wasn’t intending to make a racially insensitive comment.
The young, dark skinned boy sitting next to me took it a completely different way, however, and I was reprimanded for my speech. To this day, I regret the comment.
I might be slow, I haven’t had my coffee yet, but are you referring to Lou Diamond Phillips, the actor? I don’t at all understand this:
and in the second story I still don’t get the reference. LDP is not black and he was 7 years old in 1969. If I’m being whoosed, just ignore this, but I’m really trying to get what you’re talking about and it’s not making any sense.
I missed the edit window, but I went back and re-read the post and now see this part:
I missed it the first time around and the rest made zero sense. Carry on.
When I was a little girl my grandma asked whether I would marry a black man. I said no, then my kids would be brown.
- I have no idea why I thought this was a problem and I wonder why that would have been my reaction.
- The worst part was my Grandma smiled and looked approving about it. :mad:
When I was five years old, I asked my mother, “What do you call those black people at school?”
My mom cast about for the most culturally sensitive nomenclature. I don’t think African-American was popular back in 1982. Also, my school only had one black student. She replied, “Well, you could say black, or you could just call him by his name. His name is Jay.”
I was obviously confused by her response, and said, “No, not him. The women that wear the long black dresses.”
“Oh, those are called nuns. You call them ‘sister.’”
Not me but my son. He was three and we had just finished spending the day at the zoo. He loved the monkey house where we saw a gorilla with her newborn baby.
We went out to dinner and while waiting for a table I could see him staring at the African American family in front of us. Their brand new baby was sleeping in a baby carrier on the floor. As he stared at the baby, a horrid thought came into my head that he would say the wrong thing.
Sure enough, he turned to my wife and said, “Mommy, that baby looks like a…” Fortunately, I covered his mouth with my hand and dragged him outside. When I took my hand away he wanted to know why I did that. I told him that I knew he was going to say that the baby looked like a monkey (that’s what he called all apes) and that it was not a nice thing to say. He said, “But, Daddy! The monkey baby was cute!”
I was at a party, meeting my friend’s new Japanese exchange student girlfriend. I guess I’d had a couple drinks, not too many, but I asked her “what’s it like living somewhere where everyone looks the same?”
That’s pretty much the stupidest AND most racially insensitive thing I have ever said, right at once. And I can’t blame it on being 5 years old, either 
I just remembered one I did, but it was regarding sexual orientation, not race.
My wife’s cousin is a lesbian. She had just returned from a trip to Europe and was telling us about all the places she had visited. As she was telling us about The Netherlands I remembered traveling through there while I was stationed overseas. I asked her, “So, did you get to see any of the dikes while you were there?” :o
There was dead silence from her for a few seconds. Then she said, “Yes. As a matter of fact I stuck my finger in one.”
When I was a teaching assistant, I had a class with two Asian girls. For some reason, I had a horrible time telling them apart. I’ve been around plenty of Asian people, so I don’t know why I had this problem, but it got me in trouble twice while handing back papers. They both gave me funny looks when I handed them the wrong paper, and my face turned scarlet when I realized my mistake. :o They never said anything, but I don’t think they liked me very much .
By the end of the semester, oddly enough, they looked completely different…
I once worked as a mailman during my summer vacaton. One week I was working a predominantly Jewish wealthy neighborhood. I had a certified letter addressed to Mrs. Berstein to deliver so I rang the door bell. A middle-aged black woman answered the door and I explained to her that someone had to sign for the letter. She could either call Mrs. Bernstein and she would sign on this line or she could write her own name over here and sign on that same line.
Her response: I am Mrs. Bernstein.
I think we both just laughed about it for a second. No hard feelings as far as I could tell.
It’s Derry, ya protty bastard 
My mom tells me she was at some public event as a child when she saw her first black people. She bellowed “look at all the chocolate people!”
The worst moment I had wasn’t exactly my fault, but none-the-less, I still feel guilty about it.
Once or twice a month, my sorority invited over a fraternity for dinner. On the night we had Alpha Phi Alpha (an African-American fraternity) over, our menu was, I kid you not: fried chicken, corn-on-the-cob, Kool-aid, and watermelon. :eek:
I found out about the menu exactly two hours before the dinner, and tried to convince our chapter president that maybe it wasn’t the best of ideas to serve that. Being a rather naive type, she didn’t get why it might be a problem. Then I tried to convince our cook. After failing on both accounts, I decided I was too mortified to attend and just didn’t show up. I don’t think it was intentional or mean-spirited on anyone’s part, and I still hope that it was an accident of meal planning on our idiot cook’s part, but still…it’s no suprise we didn’t have another social with them for quite a while…
At a black friend’s house, I am looking at a curio and notice some trinkets with hebrew writing on them. I asked her about them and she explained what they were (I forgot) and to what jewish ceremony they pertained. I looked blankly at her. She said “I am jewish”. “Really?!”. “Yes, I am black too” :o
I worked as a substitute teacher for the month before school got out. I often had trouble telling similar-looking kids apart in the classroom, and would sometimes call one towheaded boy by the name of another towheaded boy–but I always got White Liberal Guilt when I made the mistake with black girls, possibly compounded by my mangling of their unfamiliar names (was she named Taniqua or Taquana? that sort of thing). Once I was subbing in a third-grade class and doubly messed up, calling a girl by a mangling of another girl’s name. I immediately apologized, but the girl smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry, our teacher does that all the time.” Given that their teacher was also black, I felt a little better about it :).
As for feeding the fraternity the chicken-and-watermelon meal, I’m really not sure that’s such a big deal. That sounds like a pretty standard cookout meal to me; unless there were other signs that the sorority were mocking the fraternity, I’d be a little surprised if they were offended by it.
Daniel
Ha, that’s a pretty good example right there.
I hadn’t ever met anyone who wasn’t Catholic before, being raised in South America, attending Catholic school, etc. When I came to the U.S. and one of my new girlfriends told me she was a born-again Christian, I laughed and said there was no such thing. I think I was 14.
I once told a fellow faculty member at the college where I was working that I had really enjoyed his piano concert the week before.
There were two male Asian professors at the school–one in the music department and one in the chemistry department. Guess which I was talking to?
In high school, in the mid 80’s or so, the school decides to have “African American Day”. The day arrives, and several students apparently got together and decided to dress up like KKK that day.
Now, I wasn’t one of these people, but I do recall only thinking it was funny when I saw it. I’m not sure it even crossed my mind that it might have been wrong or tasteless in any way.
It curdles my blood thinking about it today,
When I was a kid, my younger cousin would come and live with us for months at a time. During one of those stays my mom started dating the gentleman who is my step-dad now, whose last name is Berry. He’s black. My cousin was about 4 or so and for a long time called him Mr. Black Berry. My step-dad thought it was pretty funny, but my aunt was mortified.
You want Lou Diamond Phillips bad, don’t you?