I was born white in 1946. In all reality I had nothing to do with it but had to play along. I grew

[wasupaloopa]

up in Dayton Ohio. It was then a pretty segregated city. Main Street was the dividing line. The black side of town was west of Main St. The white side of town was east of Main St.

It hadn't always been that way. The Wright Brothers grew up on Hawthorne Ave. which was west of Main St. Their bicycle shop was on West Third.

There were good reasons for my family to go to the black side of town. My dad knew a good black mechanic who could keep our 1948 Plymouth running. Every Saturday we went to a farmers market on West Third. My guess is that the market had been going on since before the area became segregated. The prices were right for a poor family like us. When ever us kids encountered black kids we just stood there staring at each other.

The High Schools on the west side were Roosevelt and Dunbar. Paul Laurence Dunbar was a black poet, novelist and playwright born in Dayton and died in 1909 two years before my parents were born. My guess is Roosevelt High School was there before segregation also.

My dad was the type of person that people here describe as wypipo. He was a factory worker at NCR. NCR built a recreation park for it's white employees called Old River. It had ball fields, picnic grounds, a lagoon and swimming pool. Black families were denied entrance to Old River even though they were NCR employees. White male factory workers like my dad were on the low end of the economic totem pole but they saw themselves above the blacks who could not get the kind of jobs the whites had. My dad taught me that we were better than the "n word".

When I was very young I never gave it a thought that black folks lived on the west side and didn't go to Old River. That is until I started to question what I was being taught in Catholic School about the mysteries of faith.

My dad was not raised Catholic and my mom was. My dad taught me to question what I was being taught in school but my mom told him not to do it. So I began to also question what my dad taught me about black folks. I never saw black people on our side of town. And I never went to the black side of town without my parents.

I decided to ride my bike to the west side and see for myself what was going on there. My mom had lived in a boarding house on the west side before she met my dad. She lived with other single women both black and white. My mom never became racist like my dad. I believe my mom was the reason I never bought into the racist things my dad tried to teach me. And yes I realized that white males like me had privileges that others didn't it was very easy to see.

Also I loved Motown Music. We had a radio station WONE that played Motown along with rock and roll. Johnathon Winters was a DJ for WONE in the 40's and that was where he invented people like Maud Frickert to talk to. His family owned Winters Bank on the corner of Third and Main.

I went to sleep listening to Motown every night.

I went to an all boys Catholic High School were we were taught by a very socially aware order of priests and brothers. We were always on the integration side of civil rights. My friends and I hung out at Antioch College in Yellow Springs mostly because we got along well with the hippie type girls. They were older than us but we like hanging with them and they liked having us around. One time we accidentally ended up in a civil rights march in Yellow Springs. A white barber there refused to cut the hair of black people. We rode into town on my motor scooter and pulled up to the end of the march and followed it through town. After the march no store owner would sell us anything to eat or drink.

So after the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, the year after my high school graduation a bunch of us went to Georgia with Antioch students to help with voter registration. We could help people sign up to vote without their having to go through the questioning that took place at court house. I did not occur to us at the time that we could be killed for what we were doing.

By this time I had a job at a grocery store and had many black co workers who invited me to their house parties. I went to James Brown concerts with a black female co worker because she convinced me that it was better then my going alone. We weren't too popular with the black guys at the concert.


So why am I writing all this. Because I really dislike the wypipo thing going on here and I don't think I am a racist even that term is to be used for racists as I was told.

Some of us old farts have a history that younger people don't I think. To me wypipo is divisive and I can't buy into the justifications for using it.

I think there are others like me but seems we are poo pooed and out numbered. So my guess is I just need to ignore the wypipo threads from now on because it has become the cause celeb.

[LexVegas]

1. ....

[d_r]

2. Rude

[Squinch]

6. This is a creepy response to someone who is sincerely trying to have the conversation.

[EffieBlack]

10. Wow..That's pretty obnoxious.

[LexVegas]

22. How 'bout now?

[LanternWaste]

11. Oddly enough, an apt indicator of your own character rather than the OP.

Oddly enough, an apt indicator of your own character rather than the OP.

Shooting for the trifecta today, eh? Good luck, I s'pose...

[oberliner]

4. Thank you for sharing this

Much appreciated - lots to think about!

[procon]

5. Very well writ. Same age here, similar experiences, plus the gender restrictions of

being a smartass young woman growing up in the Mad Man era and being involved with civil rights... what a combination! My parents disowned me for a time, that was painful, but I persisted. Anyway, health has long since put a crimp in my old activist days, but my keyboard still works just fine.

I remain opposed to the use of any racially derogatory slurs, and this wypipo business is no less divisive than any of the other offensive terms that have been used to belittle the "others". There is no reason or justification for using any demeaning words that are intended to dehumanize whole segments of the population. None.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. You, Joe Madison, and one of my BILs are from Dayton

(and I have been there)

Madison talks quite a bit about the city and exactly what you describe down to the schools, and he will be 69 next month (my BIL's oldest brothers are in their 60s too). What you describe happened in most cities, often aside from maybe one neighborhood that might have been somewhat "integrated".

The whole (modern) phenomena of funk came out of the "west side" of Dayton (beyond "Motown" ) - groups like the Ohio Players, Lakeside, Sun, Slave (and Steve Arrington), Heatwave, and artists like Bootsy Collins, etc.

Dayton made the parts for the Detroit cars.

IMHO, and you should know this by now, "slang" goes in and out of style, and moreso in this speeded-up internet world. Locking onto the term-du-jour in this day and time is silly. Only YOU can be comfortable in who and how YOU are, and others will like you or not. It is what it is.

As I mentioned in another thread, consider the tale of the "Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss and what happened at the end, whether you were a "star-bellied Sneetch" or a "plain-bellied Sneetch". The two had to come to a realization that "privilege" is really an unnecessary state of being, but both sides need to engage into discussing and coming to the realization about the "why".

[EffieBlack]

12. This is really interesting

Lots of food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to share it.

[Skidmore]

13. I grew up in a

sundown town in west central Illinois which was forced to ditch those laws when Civil Rights laws were passed. Full of foul mouthed, PBR swilling bubbas. Never met black person until I was in my teens. Left the that soul smothering pit when I graduated high school to travel and learn. Did both and some of those early decades were tough ones.

For the past quarter century, I have been married to a black man, the kindest, most caring man I have known in my life. I've seen the racism he has endured, and that which was deflected to me. Pre hacking, I was called a "whigger" on DU. The poster was banned. Sometimes you don't need to travel far.

I recognize and understand that wypipo word. Those behaviors exist among some white folks. Whining about a word doesn't address the behavior it describes. That is what I see happening here. Recognize the behavior, call it out, and work to change it in your community.

Done. Will make only this entry on the subject. Those who know me will understand why.

[mcar]

15. Thank you for this, Skidmore

I always appreciate your perspective.

"Whigger?" Glad the poster got banned.

[sheshe2]

16. Thank you Skidmore...

I recognize and understand that wypipo word. Those behaviors exist among some white folks. Whining about a word doesn't address the behavior it describes. That is what I see happening here. Recognize the behavior, call it out, and work to change it in your community.

[Gothmog]

17. Thank you for posting this

Great post

[NurseJackie]

20. Perfect.

[Cha]

21. Mahalo for your personal

journey, Skidmore. I absolutely agree with this..

I recognize and understand that wypipo word. Those behaviors exist among some white folks. Whining about a word doesn't address the behavior it describes. That is what I see happening here. Recognize the behavior, call it out, and work to change it in your community.

[Eliot Rosewater]

23. Well spoken.

[wasupaloopa]

28. Nobody is whining about a word. And as I tried

to point out we lived that behavior and did something about it.

Racism is learned and is passed down through generations. Until you can isolate a generation from racists so that it isn’t learned it isn’t going to end.

A few months or a year of saying wypipo isn’t going to end racism either.

Doing what I did helped change things a bit

Nobody on this board by preaching to the choir and saying their mea copas is going to change anything.

Saying wypipo is only dividing us as you are doing by saying I am whining

[herding cats]

30. I've not weighed in on this here, but...

Your reply to this posters reply to you doesn't fit at all. Your words are all about you. They're selfish sounding and feel shallow to me. You ignored the posters words and what they've personally experienced entirely.

Maybe reread them and reflect a bit? What they said had merit.

[pnwmom]

31. Thank you, Skidmore!

[ehrnst]

34. Thank you. (nt)

[hunter]

14. I'm white. I'm a baby boomer. I grew up in a 99% affluent white community.

It was kept that way by cops who harassed black people with DWBs and demands for identification, accusations of trespassing and shoplifting by shopkeepers, real estate agents who'd give black people the cold shoulder, and banks that somehow couldn't approve mortgages for black people. With passage of the Civil Rights Act these sorts of institutional racism were technically illegal, but it didn't stop. Most of the "colorblind" white people in town simply didn't see it. They weren't overtly racist, they didn't consider themselves racist, but there it was. Sadly, not much has changed since. Most people there remain blissfully unaware of how unattractive their community can be to anyone who is not an affluent white person and anyone who has enjoyed living in a cosmopolitan environment.

We lived there because my parents are both artists and artists go where the day job is. Soon after my dad retired my parents left. Me and my siblings all left. None of us would go back, not even for enticing job offers.

I haven't lived in white majority communities for two-thirds of my life now. None of my immediate neighbors are white. Many of our neighbors are second generation Mexican American, like my wife. Those of us without Mexican heritage are a pretty even mix of white, black and largely Filipino Asian.

I'm not offended by the term wypipo even though I grew up cluelessly white in an affluent wypipo suburban paradise.

[wasupaloopa]

25. A black family tried to buy a house on our street

Our neighbors went around the block raising money to buy the house and then resell it.

My dad did not contribute because we were poor. Our. Rick house was covered with eggs the next day.

Today I live in a 70% Hispanic city

[malaise]

18. Beautiful post

Thanks for this

[pennylane100]

19. At the risk of sounding terribly ignorant,

what is a wypipo . Just to add my own experience growing up. When I was growing up in what then was a small town in the UK, there were few, if any people of color. I went to a convent school run by french nuns, a scary experience. However later in my teens we started getting people of the West Indies, India and Pakistan. Now the country I knew no longer exists. There are UK citizens whose families emigrated from countries all over the world. I like to think it is now a much more enlightened place. However I have not been home for many years so I cannot be sure.

[pnwmom]

32. It's just a variant spelling of "white people." But some white people feel it's an insult.

Maybe you were asking a different question, but the spelling really threw me. (Like I said here before, I read the middle syllable to sound like "Pie." )

Once I finally figured it out, it was hard for me to see the problem. Yeah, I'm in the group referred to as white people. That's how I'm viewed in the world.

[Caliman73]

24. Thanks for sharing.

You do have a history that many of us who are younger, do not. That you chose to involve yourself in the civil rights struggle is admirable and would likely suggest that the term wypipo would not describe you in anyway.

Many of us who are people of color, have also had experiences that you have not. You said you were born White and had nothing to do with it which is very clever and true. People of color typically do not fault or dislike White people for being White. As I said, we have had experiences with both White people, and people of color who have gained some power within the White power structure. We also had no choice in being born where we were but have been considered "less than" all of our lives as a result of the color of our skin.

That is likely the motivation behind "wypipo". I couldn't say for sure because I am not in the head of the author who wrote about the term. There is a sense of frustration with people who are motivated by "protecting the oppressed" when it comes to animals, but who say and do nothing about the very real oppression of people of color. It doesn't sound like you have been that kind of person.

It isn't a cause celeb, it is a way for people of color, who experience the kind of discrimination and outright fear for their safety just because of how they were born, to share some of that frustration.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

26. Thank you for sharing this....

It has relevance today still.

[Blue_true]

27. I think Wypipo is a stupid, divisive tern.

Some claim that some blacks can be Wypipo, so the term is not racist. Well, some blacks call other blacks the n-word, but that word is absolutely not ok to use under any circumstances.

[HopeAgain]

29. Sticks and stones can break my bones,

but names can never hurt me. Because when I get called something like wypipo, they don't start arresting me for waiting for someone in a Starbucks, I'm not going to get shot while reaching for my wallet at a traffic stop. My wypipo self is not considered suspicious because I exist.

Political correctness in reference to white people will only become a thing when they systematically suppress our votes.

[quickesst]

33. Born in 52.....

...and I totally relate to your OP. I avoid those threads for the same reason you do, well, that and the actual name just sounds dumb. Go ahead, say it out loud a couple times.

[Tipperary]

35. It sounds stupid.

A word that only makes sense for “pipo” who are lacking in pronunciation skills.