Being Pure White is Nothing to be Proud Of
Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950’s and 1960’s was interesting. When I was very young, I, my mother, and my younger brother lived in an area of West Los Angeles which was predominately white. It is fair to say that until I was in my junior year of high school, I was surrounded by and lived in an atmosphere of white privilege. The only time I came in contact with anyone my age who was non-white was in the local parks, and later when I joined a baseball team in a predominately Black area of Venice. I never thought about it then, but playing sports gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with different races, most of whom had a different color of skin than my own. Until my junior year in high school, 1962, and at the age of 16, I attended Catholic schools. At the end of my sophomore year, I was playing varsity basketball in a mostly Catholic summer league. I was certain to be a starting guard the following year. In late summer, I attended an event at St. B...