vocab lesson

when i was younger, i moved to Selma, Alabama. about the only reason why you'd have ever heard of it is because of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march from Selma to Montgomery, via the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

we moved when i was in third grade (and stayed till i finished 7th). it was such a different place than Columbia, SC where i grew up. selma was much smaller. and the population was (is) predominantly black.

i wouldn't go so far as to say that i'd never seen black people before, but i don't remember interacting with any prior to my years in selma. so i consider myself lucky for having lived there. otherwise who knows how skewed my view of the world would have been.
incidentally, after we left selma, we moved back to columbia, and i was in middle school. by that point it wasn't as white as i had remembered my years before.

i remember getting an interesting lesson in vocab from my 7th grade math teacher.
i wish i clearly remembered all of the circumstances surrounding it, because it does sound odd...
we were in class & it was time for yearbook pictures. i'm guessing there was a club that needed to meet for pictures. but what i remember him saying was "minorities needed to leave to take pictures" i couldn't have been more puzzled because i hadn't ever heard the term "minority" in reference to race. (and i can't imagine there'd be a "minority club" ??) i do remember being confused because i looked around my classroom, and it was me that was in the minority. i think i even may have stood up before he explained it to me.

i do believe that the bizarre term "minority" is in reference to quantity & certainly not quality. so it was a strange place to have heard it first.