So I'm a White Girl

THE PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG:
I'm not trying to piss anyone off. As this blog evolves, I'll address controversial topics that will hopefully spark some meaningful dialogue on racial issues in the US and elsewhere. Some posts will be funny to some; offensive to others. My primary intentions are to process my own experiences and to provoke conversation and contemplation with and in others. I welcome all comments, as long as they are germane and not obnoxious. In other words, comments like "Shut up, honky!!" will be deleted. Not because I'm really offended, but because it's just not helpful. It would make me laugh, though, if someone really posted that. Well, perhaps. ;)

And so we begin...

I'm a white lady, as I am frequently told. It's not that I didn't know it before (obviously), but it never figured into my thinking until I moved to Los Angeles almost 14 years ago. To be fair, where I moved from the demographic was quite different, with Caucasians representing approximately 90% of the population. But I never felt like I was part of that demographic for two reasons:

1 - I'm a military brat; lived in several different places and had different perspectives on things, and...

2 - I wasn't LDS/Mormon, but almost everyone else was!! And I tried to convert, believe me; would've made my life there a lot easier. All of my friends were LDS so it was the path of least resistance, if I could coerce myself into believing and conforming. But I went through the missionary lessons and just couldn't get myself to buy into it. Oh well...

Around 1996, I met my first real boyfriend at work. He'd come from California and was very different and exciting from the other guys I knew. Ultimately, I came to Los Angeles in 1996 with him; he didn't care for Utah and missed his home - Cali.

And it was here, in California, that I began to learn about my "whiteness" - the various ways it impacts others and my own tendencies and opportunities in general.