2/20/19 Did I Experience Much Racism Growing Up?

    Luckily, I can say no to this question that was posed to me earlier today.  This is after talking about our shitty time at Land Rover over the weekend with a coworker.  I then had the fortunate opportunity that I grew up in a vacuum of sorts.  Crystal City was the center of the Raza Unida movement in the 60's.  This prompted the local farmers who were the remaining/majority of the white population to send their kids to the surrounding schools.  I don't want to get into the specifics, but the Hispanic population grew partly because of the success of the city being "the spinach capitol of the world".  This title required manual labor to bring the crop to table and by the 60's, Hispanics outnumbered the white population significantly.  There were city politics at play, but more importantly for us going to school, in the late 60's, there was a walkout over the unfair process where I believe the cheerleaders were voted in and there were no Hispanic cheerleaders chosen even though Hispanics were the clear majority, population wise.
    By the time I went to school in the later 70's and 80's, there might be a family or two of white kids, but they were always considered the outsiders, maybe a new teacher was trying out the school and they would bring their kids in.  This scenario never lasted long, other than an occasional coach or something.  As a result, the population of students had to be about 98-99% Hispanic.  We would go to San Antonio a couple times a year for school clothes shopping or Christmas shopping, and I believe my mom would shield us from anything that might be a situation of possible racism.  if we went in a store and it didn't seem friendly, we were out.  I remember car shopping a couple times and it seemed weird that my parents would request a Hispanic.  This has kind of stuck with me in that I will go back again and again until I get a salesman I like, not necessarily brown, but it can help.  It hurts me to know some duffus is going to get my commission simply because he is outside first.  It doesn't have to be a Hispanic for me, I will take an attractive chick with big assets anytime.
    Coming to UT in 1991 was a culture shock for me.  I had to get used to talking English most of the time.  Even the few Hispanics we would meet spoke mostly English.  I have honestly had a hard time differentiating racism from just talking to stupid people, and I know they go hand in hand.  My siblings pretty much call any interaction that doesn't favor them a racist event and then they'll laugh at me because I don't see it their way, calling me naive.  Racism does come from a place of ignorance, but sometimes people are just stupid.  Sometimes, people grow up like us, where we don't have a lot of experience with other cultures and what we know is only from TV.
    I used to think it sucked because I was born in Corpus Christi that we didn't stay there, but I think growing up in Crystal City gives me a special perspective.  I didn't grow up weary of the "white man" because there were none around to fear.