Best Year To Be Born

[Yessongs]

Well.....the original voice still going strong in 2019. His gal pal not bad either. 

 

 

[maipenrai]

1 hour ago, Yessongs said:

Well.....the original voice still going strong in 2019. His gal pal not bad either. 

 

 

I remember reading an interview with the co-writer of this song, Andy Kim, where he mentioned that his friends became so sick of hearing it being played on the radio that they jokingly threatened to break his fingers so he wouldn't be able to write more songs!

I too was born in 1956 and enjoy being a baby boomer but I often wish I had been born four or five years before - I just missed the hippy experience at its peak, I was too young and living in the wrong place to see my rock and roll heroes in concert, and also to participate in the whole muscle car scene which had faded by the time I had entered the work force. 

[forcebwithu]

13 hours ago, galenkia said:

Racism has always been there, it's just accepted now that it's wrong. Back when I was young in the seventies and eighties, racist talk was normal, everyone did it and nobody thought nothing of it.

Now most people are pretty tolerant, but you will always have a minority who won't change.

I had the opposite experience. My early years I lived in a middle-class, almost exclusively White community.

In junior high and high school we had only two Black students, Bill and Sheila, brother and sister. Bill and our group of friends had a good time hanging out together, and as far as I can recall I never heard one racist comment directed at him or his sister with one exception. His sister.

Because Bill got on well with everyone, Sheila on one occasion yelled out, "Bill, you're like an Oreo cookie, Black on the outside and White on the inside". We all had a good laugh about that, including Bill. Sheila however, because of her self-perceived Blackness, never found her niche of friends in school.

[Butch]

On 5/6/2022 at 12:12 PM, galenkia said:

Racism has always been there, it's just accepted now that it's wrong. Back when I was young in the seventies and eighties, racist talk was normal, everyone did it and nobody thought nothing of it.

Now most people are pretty tolerant, but you will always have a minority who won't change.

I was a fully signed up member of the National Front in the 80's. Peer pressure was responsible for the most of it, lack of direction as well. Leaving school in 85 with no qualifications, absolutely no prospect of a job and the only friends were the local skinheads / rent a thug mob which meant that back then, violence and racism was pretty much commonplace. The turning point was getting stabbed  twice in the arm with a sharpened screwdriver in a fight which kind of put the icing on the cake for me. Still got the scars, plus I managed to get a proper leathering from my brother over it.

I am ashamed of myself, especially as there were 2 families of Jamaicans in our neighbourhood and no Asians / Europeans. We lived 2 doors down from them, and I was best mates with the youngest lad ,we would walk to school together, get into mischief and his mum and dad welcomed me into their home , fed me, let me stay for as long as I wanted and made sure the big brother walked me home (all 10 yards of it!).

As time went on, teenage years we forged our own identities. Robert (my friend) became very anti white, I followed my own path.

Looking back , the racism then was much more extreme than it is today. Throwing bananas at black people, telling them to go home, refusing to sit next to them on the bus, making offensive slanty eyes at the Chinese / Asians was not uncommon.

Racism now seems to be used as a weapon to inflict guilt on white people. A barrier and a weapon to destroy credibility, ruin careers and for those without the capability of reasoning, to get a headstart in an argument and take the moral  high ground.

Being born in the 70's sucked, but it doesn't suck as much as being born today is going to.

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by Butch

[maipenrai]

1 hour ago, Butch said:

Racism now seems to be used as a weapon to inflict guilt on white people. A barrier and a weapon to destroy credibility, ruin careers and for those without the capability of reasoning, to get a headstart in an argument and take the moral  high ground.

Spot on - one of the best statements I've ever seen regarding "racism" nowadays. In my youth, my town was considerably more remote than it is nowadays and our winters were much colder also than they are now; we didn't have a lot of people from other races around but we did have our indigenous people - we called them Indians back then but today they are commonly referred to as "First Nations" and many white people held them in contempt, sometimes deservedly and sometimes not. Complete government bureaucracies were formed to look after these people but it still wasn't enough for their politicians and never will be - you could write books about the millions, maybe even billions, of dollars that have been thrown at these native societies and in most cases totally wasted, but we are now more than ever the "evil white colonial oppressors" and always will be in their eyes if it means they can have even more gov't (read taxpayer) money thrown at them.

When I was a teenager, we only had one black man in town who was very well known at all, and he was a cab driver who some wag nicknamed "Snowball" and it stuck; today our streets and shops are filled with every race you can think of with more pouring into the town all the time - seems modern white youth doesn't want the retail jobs anymore but the filipinos and East Indians are more than happy to oblige, particularly when they are being sponsored by the big-box employers - our little northern town has become much more cosmopolitan than ever and is growing rapidly. 

[gs joe]

Didn’t have a scooby about racism at school in the sixties 

We were all treated as badly 

then one day I was in Lime street station,

an coloured American GI with his wife and family asked me which toilet his wife could use i was just a kid 

and was more interested in his flash uniform with its rows of medals 

was lost to give him a answer 

 

told the tail in school during a geography lesson

it was the first time we ever discussed racism at school 

 

 

[Glasseye]

Didn't have a clue what racism was. Had Indian friends, black friends, Latino friends, and lots of Jewish friends. Typical middle class suburb. 

Then the school districts changed. Had to take a bus to school. One day the kids all got on the wrong buses. So, we had to walk between buses and get on the proper ones. When doing so I had to walk through a long line (like a gauntlet) of folks who didn't really like me, or care. Got punched several times in the head and face. Turned into a real "wake up call" for me. Started to learn a lot of things about life after that incident. Just part of growing up in America I reckon.....

[coxyhog]

I was at my last RAF station(Marham in Norfolk) from 1978-80.There were 2 black guys there,both decent blokes and I didn't hear of or see any racism towards them.In fact I think most of us were a bit envious of them as being such a rarity they were very popular with the indigenous female population.

In 1970 there were a couple of black guys in my entry at basic(square bashing)training,again I don't remember any racism also I had a Chinese mate called Pete Foo in my trade training entry.

Fast forward to Saudi as a civvy,just about every one of us hated the Saudis.We called them the N word,the Americans called them SandN's.

In Oman the locals were very much a different kettle of fish but we used to call them Jingleys....not sure why but they were mostly decent folk.

Edited May 8, 2022 by coxyhog