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How does every ethnic joke begin? With a look over your shoulder. After all, telling off color jokes is okay if no party resembling the joke is present, right? To this day, I occasionally make these kinds of jokes myself in the presence of some of my less politically correct friends. Rarely will I stop the activity, even if it is offensive or over the top. Free speech, right? This and other questions have been tapping at my mind I have been growing more and more aware of my personal prejudices and stereotypes.

I didn't start off prejudiced. How could I? I grew up in a small mountain town in Northern California, and throughout my childhood I only remember meeting 2 children of color. In ignorance, I asked an African-American girl at summer camp if she was born with dark skin or if she was just really dirty. I remember looking at her hands and wondering why they were so much lighter than the rest of her body. She took it pretty well, as I imagine I wasn't the first North State hick to gawk at her strangeness.

When I was 13, we moved down to this miserable little desert town in Southern California. There, for the first time, I received firsthand knowledge of Hispanics. During the first week of school, I looked at this girl in what was apparently the "wrong way" and then she and her friends jumped me and harassed me for months. Other kids at school said that was just how it was: "You mess with one bean, you get the whole burrito."

I had problems with male Hispanics as well. Their aggressive and direct style of communication threw me off and intimidated me. I didn't have the right frame of reference and things would quickly get out of control when these young men took an interest in me. They would get in close and trap me until I sometimes had to fight to escape the situation. After the first year living down south, I ran away from home and lived on the streets for a year or two, during which time I learned that Mexican men would do anything a smiling blonde girl asked. I learned to use them, while remaining terrified of their women.

When I was 15, I moved back to Northern California and mostly shelved the whole racist issue, although I did get particularly passionate about the gang-bangers who were "taking over" our town. Can we say in-group identification?

Around age 18, I moved to the Denver Metro area and found myself living amongst all kinds of people: African American, Japanese, Latino, Arabian, Indian, Greek, Jewish, and countless nationalities beyond. I rode

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