Listening to Morning Edition in the early morning darkness I heard a story about a Sikh family in Canada disappointed to be denied visas to return to India because the two countries are having a diplomatic conflict. One man was disappointed about not being able to bring his children to celebrate Diwali in the place where he was born and raised.
Listening I had a flashback from childhood of my maternal grandmother, who was a teacher of elocution, correcting me when I said something about a woman who was "raised" to believe something or other. She corrected my use of the term raised by saying "Don't use that word for people because people are reared, not raised. Animals are raised, and people are reared."
On another occasion she corrected me for referring to a woman of color as a lady. "Say woman, not lady. We say Negro woman and white lady." She is also the only person I knew who used the word octoroon in conversation suggesting someone she saw on TV likely had a black great-grandparent.
I was spoon-fed polite prejudice and racism from an early age. I already knew not to use the word "black" because it was how ignorant people spoke. Also we were always taught to pronounce the word properly: NEE-grow. We never used the N-word.
I was nearly twenty when I realized how prejudiced I had been "reared", becoming pro-active overcoming it in myself and others. And now, pushing eighty, I'm still fighting the same level of ignorance in the world around me.
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