Ok, I did not say you can't be angry @sarahsweets. Actually, I posted here in your thread and happened to be very sick that day and after I posted I was going to delete some things because I was worried about touching on the political too much and it wasn't my intention. I was too sick to get back and edit.

You asked me questions based on what I posted and was unable to edit and I did spend a lot of time actually answering your questions and I quoted you, but my post was edited while I did that so all that time I invested in answering you would not post. YET, it was not really a waste after all in that it made me realize some things, and how certain things can trigger me that I had not realized before.

You asked me how I know certain things were said, what's my source. Well, given you are younger than me I have lived through things where I did actually hear people say things. Maybe you can watch footage and read about Martain Luther King who was most likely assassinated before you were born. For me, I was a child of 12 years old when he was assassinated and I was able to live and actually see the affect he had and listen to my parents talk about him. My parents showed respect for him, and my parents did not care for "discrimination" (which includes racism and prejudice).

I actually had a friend in high school that was black and she was funny and nice and I had her to my house and she had me others to her house for sleep overs. Her parents lived in a nice more affluent town and her father was a doctor. I went to a private school and from what I recall, she was the only Black student. She was in a lot of my classes and her presence was friendly and comical and the classroom seemed empty without her and her constant comedic existence that got us laughing, her name was Linda. And I can't remember her last name, and just this morning I realized that I could look her up in my year book.

I graduated in the seventies, and I tried different things, different jobs and one of the things I tried was working in sales. At that time more things were being made in Japan and the company I worked for sold their copy machines. This was a period where Xerox was going to face competition. Xerox was an American company and many big companies had Xerox copiers. And Xerox had cornered all the ink and paper supplies for their machines too. I went through sales training and I was given a terriotory to sell in. And I had to work out of a home office near that territory. I had to go out and talk to companies of all kinds and convince them to purchase the ink and paper that was way cheaper for them to use than buying from Xerox. I got paid a weekly salary and $15 for every new account I signed. Well, back then it was a good setup and it gave me incentive to do as many calls as I could each day which I did.

Truth is, I was the way into the door too. And the real goal was to eventually convince these companies to buy the copiers made by companies in Japan. These copiers were faster and better than Xerox. Back in the seventies there was a lot of copying and paper use. So, when I walked in and talked about the cost reduction advantage of purchasing paper and ink and toner from my company that works just as good, it did make bigger companies listen. I actually liked it because I got to meet a lot of different people. And at that time, I was ok with the product too in that it worked fine and was very cost affective so I was not pushed to lie.

In that home office I worked out of, there were salesmen that sold the line of copiers. Some made for big companies, some for smaller companies too. When I broke the ice and learned a company may be interested in getting a new copier because theirs were breaking down too much and were not efficent, I would give a salesman the lead.

There was a Black man in this group of salesmen and he was a very nice man who was married and trying very hard to provide for his family. He was nice like my friend Linda and I did respect how he wanted to work hard and be a good husband. So, when I got a lead I was very happy to hand it to him.

He made an appointment and went and to my horror the man at that company literally threw a fit and actually said "how dare you send a black man" to me!!". I felt horrible and was so embarrassed for this man that I was so excited to give my lead to. At that time there was also that voice that was saying "I do not want my children growing up in a "Racial Jungle". I will never forget how that sentiment was very real, BECAUSE I lived it. I was so young at that time and it was not like I could really say anything either. I was not prepared to experience that either.

As I mentioned to you in one of my posts, when my mother finally shared with me what she was told when she was young, "you have to stay here, you can't mingle with THEM" which happened to be the wealthy crowd that had summer homes on the island she lived on. That had a very deep meaning to me at the time, and I realized why it was so important to her to talk to me about discrimination. She understood how that felt, she empathized and looking back from where I am now when she talked about that all those years ago when I sat and watched Shirley Temple, she wanted me to know truths about what I was watching. Oh I remember all too well, "you live here, you go to school here too, NOT WITH ME or MINE".

Just wanted you to know "my source" and how I seem to know certain things. There are things I don't need to read about because I lived it and heard it first hand.

The serenity prayer helps me at times because I had to remind myself "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference". Sometime sarahsweets, it's very hard.