Quote:
Originally Posted by cardinalfan
A few years ago, a small rural school. Older man in overalls on the front row tells me I need to "help my boy", speaking of one of my partners... a young black man.
At halftime, my partner asked me why I let him make a racial comment like that. I was a little embarrassed that I had taken it to mean he was young and inexperienced.
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I was in basic training before I found out "boy" was an epithet. I grew up in a small farm town in the middle of Iowa; our only minorities were a Laotian family. It wasn't that I used the term ignorantly, I had never even heard it used in that way.
One guy (a black guy from Montgomery, AL) in our flight took offense when another guy called him a boy (the initial comment may have been innocent, I don't know). After things calmed down a bit, I learned a lesson on southern racial history.