What cultures/nationalities/religions were you aware of as a kid?

MrsBini10 · September 2011

When I lived in GA, I met more than one adult who said they had never met a Jewish person before. This shocked me. In my Boston suburb hometown the population was at least 1/3 Jewish (and probably another 1/3 Catholic) so to me Jewish was "normal". But I was just thinking, I never met a Muslim until I was at least 14-15. When you were a kid, did you spend a lot of time around people from other cultures, countries, or religions? Do you remember thinking anyone was "weird" for a cultural reason? I mean obviously I no longer sit around going "whoa, people from other countries are SO weird!" but I had a friend in 4th grade from India and she wore traditional clothes after school a lot and I remember wondering why she was dressed so funny!

stever · September 2011

My parents best friends from grad school were Jewish, 2 of my first little friends were half African American/half-Hispanic. One of my best friends from junior high and high school was Native American - she'd do beadwork while I read Teen Beat and we were listening to Belinda Carlisle.

I can't really remember reacting to other different cultures, though I'm sure I must have. Or maybe I didn't. I was definitely much more aware of the hard core Christian girls who wore really long skirts all the time than I was of people that were foreign or a different color than me.

eta: I grew up in So Cal and my parents were quasi-hippies, so I'm sure that informed my perspective.

Brit's Luna154 · September 2011

I grew up in Northern NJ, it is the ultimate melting pot. I distinctly remember coming home from my friend's birthday party when I was maybe six and my mom mentioning something about her being Chinese and I was like "huh?" I just thought that different kids came in different looks/colors. I guess that means that I was unaware at first, but not because I hadn't met anyone who was different from me, just because I thought it was normal for people to be different.

sabae · September 2011

I grew up in SE Asia. My family was buddhist, our neighbors were muslim, and I had christian friends in school. I had never met a jewish person until I moved to the States in my teens.

JalapenoMel · September 2011

I grew up in the military, so I was surrounded with every different kind of person you could imagine.

Avion22 · September 2011

My parents had good friends (with kids our age) who were Jewish, so I was aware of that. I don't think I appreciated that there were other religions besides Christianity and Judaism, though I do remember there was a kid in my class who couldn't celebrate his birthday or say the Pledge of Allegiance for religious reasons (though I admit that I don't remember what religion he was). I had classmates who were Asian, Indian, and black, so I knew that some people just looked different from others, but didn't attach this to any kind of cultural difference (to me we were all just American kids).

bail229 · September 2011

I grew up in a suburb of NYC. There is a very high Jewish population in my town so even though I am Catholic I was aware of Judaism as a religion in elementary school. There was also a large population of Asian families, especially Japanese. Since we were so close to NYC they would move to my town for a few years for their parents jobs. I thought it was so cool to be from another country and I was friends with a lot of the Japanese girls and would have them teach me some words in Japanese and how to do some origami.

In HS I knew a few Lutheran and Morman students. There was still of a lot of Asian students, but I specifically remember Japanese, Korean, Indian and Chinese. There were a few African American families and some other European families as well (one of my best friends in HS was German).

jupiter2311 · September 2011

Growing up in the ME, I was obviously aware of the Muslim and christian religions. The only thing I knew about Judiasm is that Jewish people were not allowed in Saudi and I never understood that. My aunt had converted for her husband, so she was basically the only Jewish person I knew for years. And I'm not really sure that counts...

The first school I went to in Saudi was the consulate school but even though I am an American, I was still a minority, there were plenty of various other cultures/nationalities and went to school with Indian, Lebanese, Asian, etc. The next school had more Americans, but still had plenty of different cultures. I would not trade that experience for anything. My best friend in middle school was Hindu and most of DH's friends are of Arab descent and a mixture of Muslim and Christian. You can imagine my culture shock sophomore year of high school when my HS in Texas had about 1 black person and I was probably 1 of 10 Mexican-Americans. Surprise

Publius · September 2011

I grew up in the midwest, but I can't remember the first time I ever met someone who was ______. My best friend From childhood is Sikh, and although I went to a nondenominational Christian school (in the sense that it's not affiliated with a church, not in the super fundamentalist nondenominational way), there were Jewish, Muslim, Budhist, Mormon, Catholic, Orthodox, etc., kids attending it from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. TBH, the only thing I wasnt really exposed to as a kid were people of other socio-economic classes within my own community. I was an older teenager before I realized that my parents were a far cry from poor. I hung out with kids who got Porches and BMWs when they turned 16, so to me the fact that my parents wouldn't just buy me whatever I wanted meant we were poor. I was incredibly sheltered in that respect.

Val · September 2011

A bit of everything. I went to a very diverse high school ethnically speaking and the class would be split according to denomination for religious studies (which is normal state school system here) so everyone was aware of who was what, if only culturally.

I had classmates from Zaire, Turkey, Morocco, China, Russia, etc. over the years, which was cool.

The most "exotic" classmate I ever had was in primary school, he was from Mauritius. We were all jealous of his "going home" holidays...

PittPurple · September 2011

Interesting!

I grew up on Long Island, NY. Bizarrely, my parents managed to find the one neighbourhood in the area where I ended up being the only Jewish child in my elementary school (until my brother joined me!). It was a very white, Protestant, blond area. Amusingly, my core group of friends was the one black girl (who was also English!), the one Pakistani/Muslim girl, the one Catholic girl and the one Indian girl in my grade. My brother's best friend was the one Chinese boy in his class. I actually had to deal with a lot of prejudice, even from the teachers and upper level administration. My mom fought a lot of battles. All I wanted to do in the world was fit in so I hated how hard she tried to teach everyone about Judaism but looking back at it, I'm sure she did the right thing!

For years, my best friend was this lovely black girl in my class. She was over all the time and would come to synagogue with me (and I'd go to church with her) and we were inseperable. She came into the city (NYC) with us once and we were wearing matching outfits and my brother told everyone we were twins. He literally had no idea that we were different colours, he just didn't see it at all. I loved that.

sushisamba · September 2011

Being from a small province in Canada, I had pretty much zero exposure to people of other races or religions. I don't think we had one non-white person in my high school, and the only other different relgions were some jehovah witnesses. But I remember learning a lot about different types of people in school and at home, so I knew they existed and I don't remember the first time I saw or met a non-Christian white, so I must not have thought anything weird about it.

Mrs DRJ · September 2011

I once thought we were diverse; but really it was white, upper middle class Christian with people with a few people from Indian, or Korean descent and a few African Americans, but they weren't black. I remember being told that they were whiter than the rest of us! We had Christians, Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, and those of different descent were Hindu and Muslim. We had a fairly large Mormon group because I grew up less than 20 miles or so from where John Smith received the viewing from God.

Regardless of religion, no one was very traditional and wore than traditional attire. That was a shock to see when we moved to London.

More than anything else, we lacked soco-economic diversity. I never really realised that people struggled to put food on the table, had to take mass transit (not focusing on NYC or alike), work more than one job to take care of there family. If you didn't have your own car by 17 (and it wasn't always used) you were 'poor'.

It's amazing how my views and experiences have changed.

titicole · September 2011

Grew up in Arlington, VA. Pretty white except for the black students that were bused in. I was classmates with 2 jewish boys, a few Catholics, a few Mormons and there rest were practicing or non-practicing Christians.

My first exposure to Islam, were the African-American men who stood on street corners trying to raise money. I guess this was of the Malcolm X variety. It wasn't until much, much later that the Pakistani girl in middle school with me who talked about here arranged marriage was also Islamic. (No she did not want to marry this man.)

MrsBini10 · September 2011

Mrs. DRJ, you knew African Americans who weren't black? What were they?

TTC76 · September 2011

Well I am Jewish and moved to IL when I was young.So I knew about christian(sp) I went to public school and while living in Israel I learned about Muslims , Druzes and the Bahha(sp) religion.

I may not have interacted with them on a daily basis till University, but I knew about them.I grew up in a family that was very open to other cultures and wanted us to know about them and their religions.

I will say I had never met a practicing Catholic till my DH went to grad school in the states.

hamilton.ja · September 2011

I grew up in WASP heaven in CT. There was not a ton of diversity though there were families was usually at least one or two non-Caucasian children in my class throughout elementary school. I would say I knew all about other cultures and religions from school and church mostly and was taught pretty early that pretty much anything is normal, but maybe that was just part of my family. When we did confirmation in church we had to attend about 5 different local (some we did have to travel 30-45 minutes each way to get to) churches to learn about their beliefs so there was definitely some more exposure that way.

Anasara · September 2011

I grew up in a city with a large resettled refugee population. We had lots of SE Asians, West Africans & Latin Americans in my school. I remember in middle school being 1 of only a handful of kids who didn't get sick because of food poisoning. They served tainted ham so the vegetarians (I am one), the Jews & Muslims didn't get sick. Kid of funny, actually.

The only culture(s) that really sticks out in my mind would be Native American (specifically Crow, Blackfoot, Salishan & Nez Perce) since when I went to college for a year in MT there was a large Native American population. Growing up in a big city on the east coast, there's not a lot of them. I mean, there's a lot of random people who have a great-great grandpa who was Cherokee, but I'm talking "straight off the rez" Native Americans. And visiting the rez for the 1st time was an experience. Having been to refugee camps in West Africa (Budumbura, etc.) the living conditions for some are unfortunately similar. And the HIV rate, alcoholism rate are very high. Poverty I had never even seen in Southy (Boston). But at the same time, seeing their cultures not as something from a textbook that no longer exists but IRL was really cool.

ILikePineapples · September 2011

My church in my small town/city took us to a variety of different religious places as kids, so I knew all about many religions. My school had international boarders so I got to meet people from all over the place. I was lucky that way.

MrsBini10 · September 2011

I just remembered: my college BFF is from Kentucky and until college she'd never met an Asian person.

Publius · September 2011

MrsBini10:
Mrs. DRJ, you knew African Americans who weren't black? What were they?

I don't want to speak for her, but I assume she's either talking about people of Arabic descent from northern Africa or white people from Zim, RSA, or Namibia who had immigrated to the US and naturalized.ETA: never mind. I just read her post. I now assume that these people were black but were told they weren't black because of their/ their parent's socio-economic status. I know a lot of my black friends growing up were flat out told they weren't really black because of the way they spoke, where they lived, etc.

MrsBini10 · September 2011

Publius:
MrsBini10:
Mrs. DRJ, you knew African Americans who weren't black? What were they?
I don't want to speak for her, but I assume she's either talking about people of Arabic descent from northern Africa or white people from Zim, RSA, or Namibia who had immigrated to the US and naturalized.ETA: never mind. I just read her post. I now assume that these people were black but were told they weren't black because of their/ their parent's socio-economic status. I know a lot of my black friends growing up were flat out told they weren't really black because of the way they spoke, where they lived, etc.

Wow. I've never heard of telling black people they're not black. That really bothers me actually.

klingklang77 · September 2011

I grew up on Long Island.

In my town there was a large population of Jewish people. The rest were mostly Catholic. I didn't know any other Protestants, etc. I knew one Muslim and she lived next door to my best friend, so we always played together. It was a mostly white town. Some Chinese, some Hispanics, and one African American.

The next town over was mostly all Hispanic and African American.

What cultures/nationalities/religions were you aware of as a kid?

Re: What cultures/nationalities/religions were you aware of as a kid?

Choose Another Board

Search Boards