Finding a place

I grew up in the middle of Orange County, California. A neighborhood so homogenous that I saw the Catholic kids in their plaid skirts and white shirts as alien and exotic. We passed on the sidewalk beside the parochial school playground with caution and wonderment. I was 14 and in high school before I realized that my friend, Buzz, was Jewish. This was the 1950s and early 1960s and sensitivity to differences meant not picking on the red-headed kid.
In fits and starts, I found my eyes and ears opened to the reality of a different world–a larger world–than mine. In August of 1966, the Southeast L.A. community of Watts exploded and at 16 I was glued to the radio for six nights, reading the newspaper and trying to understand what was so wrong that tens of thousands of people would take the streets in rage. A few years later, I found myself spending a year in Washington, D.C., at Howard University in my ongoing quest to make sense of this larger world.
It came as a shock to discover that as a white kid in a blue-collar home, I had led a life of privilege. I was free to pursue whatever course my intelligence, talent, and character would choose. That consciousness only emerged because I was confronted repeatedly by the constraints that faced my friends and colleagues who were African-American or Hispanic or female. I was on the swim team at Howard and I remember traveling with the team and the feelings of pained anger and embarrassment every time a white waitress would s...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - May 10, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs