I was born in the 1940s in NYC, where we were all so used to living among different races and ethnicities that it was an unpleasant shock to find so much bland sameness when my husband and I moved to rural Pennsylvania.

I do have a memory of intentional racism though. When I was 10, my dad and drove down to Florida on vacation. In St. Augustine, the "Whites Only" water fountain had a line of people waiting to use it, so I decided to try the one for "Coloreds." The water had sulphur in it.

Many years ago, I lived in a small city in Michigan so imbued with bigotry that it hurt my heart to live there.

We had the opportunity to move to Blacksburg, VA, home to a large university. I remember driving into town in the U-Haul and the tears started to flow, for within a couple of minutes it became clear that we had entered a multi-cultural, worldly community.

I'll never forget that moment.

I was born in the late 60s and spent my early years in Hawai'i and California, next to military bases and it was impossible to be bigoted any particular direction (white was a minority in both places). Hawai'i has been invaded by so many different countries, there are almost no natives any more and being on a military base made it full of every race, creed, color, and religion. All the kids played together. California is like NY in that it is a landing place for all sorts. Many Asians and Mexicans come there. So the schools were made of all races again. I am thankful I didn't go through the things many seem to have experienced. Even after moving to the South, I don't see much overt racism. And by the time I'd entered schools where unintentional racism might have been, it had been brought to light. My middle school's counselor was the first Black graduate of the local high school and she likely had great influence over a lot there. I take that back, I'm really very grateful I didn't experience what others have. My son is still amazed when people talk about racism because he too doesn't really encounter it. We fight it hard when we see it (now it's gays being discriminated against).

I have two memories of racism. My father sold real estate, and was the first realtor in our community to sell a home to people of color "north of the tracks" so to speak. He was criticized for it.

My family took a driving trip across the country. In one state we stopped at a laundromat which had a sign on the front: "WHITE ONLY." I was so naive that I thought it meant white clothing only! ("Where are we gonna wash the colored stuff???")

You asked for unintentional racism, but the above isn't. I shared anyway!

Not sure what the question means. I don't remember any racism, I never witnessed any personally. I was told never to use the N word and I remember the Black Americans had to eat in the back of the bus station cafe. I was to young to understand why.

I was allowed to go anywhere in town as a child, including the north side. I remember an elderly Black American and she gave me a gingerbread man. My memory of her is like the memory of a grand mother. When I came to Wichita in 1950, I was surprised to see them in our schools.

socks, I take your answer and mine to be "no, we didn't encounter unintentional racism" :)

Other than singing catch a tiger by the toe, I don't recall any real racial slurs. We were raised in a community that had interment camps for both Japanese Canadians who were moved off the west coast during the war, and for German POW's. The Japanese stayed and many Germans immigrated back after the war, because they were treated so well. I grew up with First Nations kids, one was my best friend, Asian families and German families. No one thought anything about race. My parents made sure that we were raised with tolerance for everyone. I must say, there were no black families in our area back then. We all knew of John Ware, black pioneer, cattleman and horseman extraordinaire, and how respected he had been when alive, and is still respected to this day. When the first black family did move into town, early '60s, my sister made fast friends with their little girl. My sister kept talking about this girl from school, what a super person she was, and could she come over for a sleepover. My mom said yes. The little girls mother called our house to make sure it was ok. Mom said absolutely. That was when the other mom said, you do know we are black, and I don't want to put anyone in a bad situation. My mom said, again, that it was fine that this little girl come over. My sister never mentioned her friend was colored, she never "saw it", and it sure didn't matter to my parents. I feel blessed to have been raised that way.

One spring day when I was about four, my mother and I took the train into Chicago from our suburb. As we walked along the sidewalk, a woman in front of me dropped her glove. I exclaimed, "Mommy, that cleaning lady dropped her glove." My mother shushed me and bent to retrieve the glove and return it to its' owner. Nothing more was said. I was left puzzled about what I'd done wrong.

A family moved out of the city and built a new home in our suburb. Their daughter was in my class in grammar school. Her name was Janey, and she invited me to her birthday party. The party was fun, but a little small. I assumed that Janey hadn't invited all the girls in our class, which was customary. The new house was lovely, and I met and liked Janey's parents and older brothers. They moved away in a year.

When I want to college I was surprised to have been assigned a Jewish roommate. I told my mother that she was the first Jewish person I'd ever known. Mom told me that the couple who ran our local shoe store were Jewish as well as several other merchants in the town (never occurred to me). She asked if I remembered Janey. She also pointed out the ugly wording in the deed to our house that prohibited sale to Jews.

Life in a bubble of privilege.

My experience is quite opposite. I experienced racism as a young white child living in a predominately black neighborhood in Brooklyn.

I often feel that if it's anyone who should be racist, it should be me. Yet I am not. I look at each person as an individual and do not blame my black co worker or neighbor for what I experienced years ago. It disturbs me when I see the anger blacks feel toward white people of today because of white people did years and years before.

Yes, discrimination is alive and well. But IMHO it is not being handled productively by those who need to step up to the plate.

I was born in the early 1940's. In Cincinnati, Ohio. Only black people I knew worked for my dad's bar business as a cook she worked alongside my grandmother, and in our home she helped my mom, taking care of me and my baby sister. I remembered asking our housekeeper why her hair was so different then mine one day. Mine was bright red and hers was dark. I was the only red headed person I knew. lol I must have been 3 or 4. She was so kind to me and my family. I loved her. Fond memories. I didn't see any black children until I attended junior high. I remember the black only signs too in restaurants and bathrooms when we traveled by car and the homes in the south along the roadways. Yes I heard the songs etc. But we never sang them. The elementary school was all white children. Junior and high school was mixed. I probably had as many black friends as white. Today we live in a mixed neighborhood but is more white than black, asian or mexican. More older families than younger families.

Mary

As a child I lived in Cleveland, Ohio, being born in 1936. My father, who was born before the turn of the century, was definitely a racist. Maybe that's another reason why he and I were never close. I would cringe when he'd use a racial slur of any kind. Yet I can also remember the good times, gathered around the piano singing Stephen Foster songs, all of which were very racist, reflecting the South of that time, years before. Although I never thought about the lyrics of those songs, somehow I knew that racism was bad. In our lily-white part of town, I never saw any A-A's, until one Saturday in the grocery store when I was about 12. Obviously I have remember that all these years. I was never conflicted about racism, and I don't know exactly how I deduced that it was a bad thing; I just always seemed to know.

When I married in 1962 and moved to the 'other side of town', the much more culturally and ethnically diverse side, my godmother asked me where we were living, and when I told her, the upright, church-going lady, she said "What? Over there with those n------?" My response was "And you call yourself a Christian?" and I stormed out, never talking to her again.

I suppose also, if my parents ever got wind of the picture of my husband and me walking in the front of the civil rights parade a few years later, that was published on the front page of the Black newspaper, they would have died.

That was at a time when Cleveland had a lot of racial problems. Met my new neighbors when we gathered outside when there was a bombing due to a Black family moving in down the street. It was the Fair Housing era.

We then moved to Michigan and I worked in Detroit during the riots there, although we lived in Ann Arbor. I took the train into Detroit each morning. At one point the commuters got word to each other that there were shots being fired around the train depot, and we made plans about how we were to get ourselves across the park to the depot to got home. We ended up taking up a collection for the bus driver to drive us across the park. No problems, but needless to say, no one worked in Detroit for several days after that.

Now here I am in Alabama. Pretty quiet here now. My son went to Selma last week for the march. We've come along way, but so much farther to go. . .

I recall when in the 6th grade, ~1959, we had a "Minstrel show" at school. Our town was probably 98% white, but there was one girl in my class who was black.

Babysitting for my Aunt when I was 16, a neighbor girl several years younger than I, told me her family was colored, but "light".

It's easy enough to look back & recognize racism that we might have participated in, or witnessed, during our childhood innocence. As adults it often takes more introspection & empathy.

I just want to say to everyone thanks for sharing your stories. I was born in 1953 in south western British Columbia and I think perhaps there was some anti-Jewish sentiment but my parents refused to be a part of it. We were raised to accept everyone at face value and on an equal footing. In my neighbourhood there was no ethnic diversity and without a doubt it felt very sterile.

Where we live now my kids have friends of such diverse backgrounds, race, religion, country of origin and in many ways I envy them that richness found in their friendships.

In the early '60's I grew up in Wichita, Ks in a very diverse neighborhood. As a child, I didn't even know it was "diverse" it was normal to me.
Neighbors were Hispanic, Korean, Cuban & German.
I went to school with African American children. No big deal.

I remember our family going on vacation one hot summer to Alabama to visit one of my Dad's army buddies & their family. We spent several days there. The trash collectors came down the alley to pick up the trash, and 2 of them came to the woman's back door to ask for a drink of water. She was disgusted, but gave them 2 mason jars filled with water. They thanked her graciously, gave back the jars and she threw the jars in the trash.
When she wasn't looking, my Momma got the jars out of the trash, washed them and put them back in the cupboard. I remember Momma indicating to me that I was not to say anything about it. I didn't understand the "why" until
years later.

The racism many of you have described was and still is culturally accepted and well entrenched, not unintentional in any way.

I agree with jemdandy. Ignorance is ignorance, there's still way too much of it around.

I'm the OP, thank you for all your responses! emma, I realized afterward that I could have phrased my question better. I was trying to ask if any others took part in anything that was racism, without being aware of it, in their childhood. It sounds like some of you (I'll use rob as an example) were fortunately raised during early childhood in an ethnically diverse community, so racism by means of words or acts was thankfully no longer tolerated, as it was in many other areas of the country.

I grew up in Windsor Ontario, right across the river from Detroit. There were very few people of any 'colour' at the time, as most of us had white European heritage. However, we lived only 5 minutes across the border to Detroit, where we often shopped, went to Detroit Tiger baseball games, and enjoyed all the other great culture and entertainment that Detroit had to offer. My mother worked all her life for a law firm on Woodward Ave. in Detroit. So although Windsor was a mostly Caucasian demographic, we grew up seeing and interacting with many people of colour, due to our close proximity to Detroit.

At age 5 when I started school, I had really only played with my own siblings, and maybe the kids next door. So I can't claim to know how things were in my whole neighbourhood, but only that I had never heard the 'N' word in my own home or from the neighbour's children either. But soon after starting school, I discovered the children chanted the words "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a ('N' word) by the toe, if he hollers let him go..." before they started any game, to determine who went first or who was 'it.' I did not know what the 'N' word was, as it was a new word to me, so I just assumed it was some kind of little animal, in my unfortunate ignorance. No one (teachers in the yard) ever came over to chastise/stop us, so I'll never know if they ever overheard us and didn't care, or simply never caught us.

I can't recall the exact moment when I learned that 'N' word was actually referencing human beings, I just remember the guilt and shame I felt when I realized I had indeed spoken that very word in my first year or two at school, in the play yard. It was quite shocking to realize that even though we lived right across from Detroit and were so much a part of their culture, that word was still being said (and much worse, when the Detroit race riots occurred, when I was eleven.) That is what I meant when I say that I have 'memories of unintentional racism' because I certainly had no clue what we were saying in the schoolyard, as 5 and 6 year olds.

My father's side of the family were all in the grocery business and all their stores were located in the black area of town. His family was respected by the black community and when my father had to leave grocery business, due to health reasons, and became a realtor, he got the black community business because they knew the family and my father would treat them right in their real estate dealings.

I remember the KKK burned a cross in front of one of the houses, my dad sold to a black family. It was then a white community, and the whites were moving to the other side of town, and that area was being sold to the blacks. His was the first house in the area to be sold to a black family.

My sister and I had a sitter, named Pet, that we all loved so dearly. I remember she taught me how to eat a baked sweet potato. Cut the end off, and stick a blob of butter to melt and eat it with a spoon from that end.

Hmmmm don't know if I want to respond to this question or not. I usually don't respond to questions I feel may hurt someone or stir the pot. Racism is intentual! Yesterday, today and tomorrow. It was just acceptable for far too long. People just stood up for themselves and collected support in recent years. They said they were human beings. They had names, just like everyone else. Not the derogatories that were being used. The answers seem to be admitting guilt at doing it. Which most people are at some point in time.

Glenda, given the era you're speaking of and that (I presume) you're talking about people living in the deep South and maybe Alabama, such honorable, respectful, and perhaps sometimes dangerous conduct on the part of your father and his family is something to be very proud of.

we lived in "downtown" Hollywood and growing up is what you would think a diverse area was very much "white bread"....I graduated from Hollywood hs in 1964, and we had less than handful of students of color. one on the football team, one girl in my swim class (who was deathly afraid of the water and gym teacher had me try and teach her to swim) never thought a thing about it...one friend, Fatima, I had no idea was muslim, till she started wearing a head covering! I assume now it was when she turned 16? the dynamics certainly have changed in the 50 years...I haven't been back, as we now live in Detroit. but I did look up the elementary school (vine st) and it seems to have changed again, to Hispanic....I guess I was lucky to have parents who kept their mouths shut and didn't stress one person over another...until my mother moved backed her with us...she never used the "bad" n word but used negro quite often...which i'd call her on...

I must add the one most shameful act that ever happen at the school was at one game we played Fairfax hs....and it was awful...some stupid students thought it would be funny to toss bagels during the game at the players...having many jewish friends, my bff's and I, left....the principal was quick to have an assembly the very next day and it was one I never forgot....the team was benched, and were not allowed to play 1-2 games....and a letter was written and sent to the fairfax team...

I grew up in California and played those childhood games of eenie, meenie, miney mo in the 40s and 50s. Our side of town was all white until junior high. When I was in third grade a Jewish family moved to our neighborhood and their son and I walked to school together. I remember one day telling my mom that when I grew up, I was going to marry J. My mom told me I couldn't because he was Jewish. His dad and my dad were friends. My mom got mad the few times my dad used the N word at home when referring to athletes but my mom called some kind of nuts she bought N toes. I think that was unintentional racism. Everyone got along in high school when we had a mixture of races. During the integration of southern schools,I just could not understand the hatred some whites had for black people. When I was an adult and my dad had died, my mom visited me in the San Francisco area and met my boyfriend from Nigeria. She liked him.

Maybe. Here is an example though of "reverse racism". I went to school with two girls originally from Louisiana. They were very popular, especially the younger girl, who was a twirler, star basketball player, and dated my future brother-in-law. It was only in fairly recent years that I realized they were half black. Yes, they had features that would have probably made a person realize that, but we never gave it a thought. I never heard one person say anything about it. I asked my husband not too long ago, if they were half black. He said yes. It was a small town, a very small school, and not one single person ever treated them any differently at all. This was in the '50's and '60's. The youngest girl graduated a year before me, in '64.

I am pretty ashamed of my home state in the deep south and their bigoted and racist views and actions. I won't go into a lot of detail, but I was raised in a county (in the sixties) that thought it perfectly normal to burn the home of a black family that tried to move there. I will never be able to live in that state again, I just cannot forgive the actions and views of the majority of the residents that probably still exist.

Audrey I appreciate you responding to this thread, despite being wary of hurting anyone or 'stirring the pot.'

I thought it would be interesting to learn of others' experiences with forms of racism while growing up, but wanted to give an example of my own experiences, so it would be clear, what I meant by 'unintentional.' I felt confident no would be disrespectful or offensive, and so far I feel we have all been able to relay our own memories without any inflammatory responses. Wouldn't it be sad if people could never share our life experiences of certain situations, merely because of fear others might misunderstand us?

I did purposely add 'in childhood' when asking if any others had memories of 'unintentional' racism, because a young child who has never heard a certain word before or has no idea of its meaning, certainly was not being a racist intentionally. However I would certainly only apply 'unintentional' to young children, because as children grow, they acquire the knowledge of vocabulary and behaviours that would enable them to discern right from wrong. Once that knowledge is acquired, and they are no longer ignorant of what racism means and consists of, then any form of racism absolutely becomes 'intentional.' Thank you for all your responses.