Reply to Whitney Houston was the first black woman I wanted to be like....

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[quote=Anonymous]15:06 I too appreciate your posts. I posted early on about how I saw her first in Seventeen magazine. I grew up as a white teen in a segregated mid-western city. At the time I was seeing Whitney in Seventeen, I was attending a KCMO jr. high public school where whites were the minority. This was during the desegregation of schools there (after a landmark Supreme Court case if I remember correctly).  This school was so tough as the kids were pretty much all bused in from really poor neighborhoods. They were angry, mean and ready to pick fights at all times - this was junior high too - a time full of raging hormones. It was eye opening for me, and Whitney was a huge bridge for me along with a few of my white and black acquaintances from that jr. high who made it out of that school and into a different and much less tumultuous school system. She was a huge positive influence for us, and I hate to think that this role also may have contributed to her issues. However coming from a family of addicts, I know all too well, sometimes you just have the genetic predisposition for it, plain and simple, and perhaps this was part of her situation, like the poster from New Jersey. How many of us partied like that during high school? Plus she had easier access than most due to her celebrity status early on. We'll never really know.

Despite this rough beginning of exposure to a completely different culture, I was truly shocked by the racism I found here in the DC area when I moved here for graduate school. It sounds strange but by growing up in a more segregated area, I actually ended up feeling that I grew up with much less prejudice than whites out here, even after my miserable jr. high experience.  It's heartening to see how much has changed over the 25+ years I've been here with each succeeding generation.  We love that our kids are growing up in such a diverse racial and socio-economic area after what we had growing up in the Midwest. I could never move back there!

Bottom line, the world lost a beautiful and influential singer yesterday, regardless of her personal problems and what brought them on.[/quote]

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