Quote:

Julie spent 1980-1984 in Germany (from kindergarten to fourth grade) before coming home to Washington D.C. "grudgingly."



Grudgingly? If I knew where that girl lived, I'd sit outside her window at night with a boom box playing go-go. Old school. Loud.

DC rocks, bitch.

Quote:

I didn’t know about such things as racism until I moved here. I lived in a farming village.



That's why she didn't know about racism. If she had lived in an urban area with an immigrant population, she'd have known all about racism. The Germans hate the Turks, the Italians hate the Albanians, the French hate the North Africans, the Dutch and Danish hate Muslims in general, the Swedes hate the Gypsies, the Norwegians hate the Pakis, and the English hate any nationality with darker skin from a former colony.

I'm not saying that everyone in Europe is bigoted, but they do have their white supremist groups and less extreme political parties that use more moderate language. Le Pen, the leader of the National Front in France, almost got elected president in 2002.

I remember reading an essay by James Baldwin where he talked about finishing the novel Go Tell It On The Mountain while living in a small village in Switzerland. When someone started stealing firewood, the locals blamed it on the schwartzer.

So basically she didn't know about racism because she lived in areas where there was no one to be racist against.