Drama Mamas, or "My Favorite Column"

I love the Drama Mamas. They handle interpersonal issues, and I like the process of thinking through a tough situation and finding a suitable course of action.

Two days ago, they had an article featuring a player who encountered in-game racists, and some of the language quoted made me feel sick. I've moved a lot in my life, lived in both the north and the south, but I'm undeniably a Southern girl. My parents are born and raised Southerners, and I spent my teenage years in the south.

This means I take great offense to the "southern style" comment. I'm a red-headed descendant of Scottish immigrants; both of my parents came from families who worked hard and honestly. My dad is from a Tennessee farming family with 5 children -- they were so poor, he'd never had ice cream until he was a teenager. My mom's mother was from a Georgia family of 11 kids and worked her hands to the bone from age 14 to age 75.

Yet with all this Southern heritage, I've only heard one racist comment that wasn't in a movie or online, and that wasn't even from someone I knew very well. And he made everyone else (all of us Southerners) feel very awkward.

Is there still tension in the South? Sure. One or two towns you hear of still have rampant racism (i.e. public and newsworthy), and in any particular town I'm sure you'll find a smattering of people who'd fall under the racist umbrella.

In my high school, the white kids and the black kids tended to stick to friends within their own race. I perceived it to be a comfort thing rather than overt tension. I asked my friend Dee if she'd ever encountered racism and she said no, but I think a mutual friend of ours had. She had a tense anger about her sometimes that worried me.

In New Jersey, one of the things I liked best was the racial integration. There was none of the wariness you get sometimes in the South. It wasn't just black and white, either, you had all types of races and backgrounds. It was just lovely. Aesthetic, even.

Now I'm in Minnesota, filled with Viking descendants and Native Americans. My sister-in-law's father was either 6 or 10 before he ever saw anyone who wasn't white. In fact, the racism up here reportedly extends between two sects of white people. Nordics Norwegians and Swedes.

(The human color scheme here is a bit boring compared to New Jersey, but the weather is nice and there's hardly any traffic, so. :/ )

All this to say: different colors are pretty. Racism is dumb. Read that article so you can help report dumb racist people in WoW because I cannot emphasize enough how badly they need to be reported.