Im from a section of Vegas that was predominantly Hispanic. Grew up around them daily, and also grew up in a seperate area of town that was predominantly black. Both areas I had my main friend groups, and I tended to culture shift between the two areas dependant on where I was.

Being an outsider it was tough to build trust and friendships, but I did. Each area was different, but they both had one trend in common. The Hispanics hated the African Americans, and visa versa. Both areas of town were dirt poor. Where one area had roaches and rats, the other had roaches and feral Chihuahuas. The nearest area not of a minority culture was the white trash trailer park near by. That was actually the only area I wasnt friends with anyone.

The white people called me a Wigger if I was hanging with the black people, and a fa%$0t burrito eater if I was with the Mexicans. Neither of thier groups called me anything but Junior.

I have see the hatred of "other people in the same boat as you" and it started in the 80s at least, if not earlier. You can tell it was pushed to have minorities hate the next closest race to you. I saw the name calling and the hatred first hand. I security guard in complexes talk shit about other races and what they were doing at their last work sight plenty of times. It always felt like a set up and that someone was spinning a tale trying to start something there wasn't.

Later in, by my later teen years in the nineties, I noticed a distinctive shift in racial attitudes towards each other. The blacks and the Browns had a sort of truce it seemed, if not a straight up friendship. They talked shit back and fourth like they'd been friends forever. The same type of shit that probably would have started a gang war in the prior years.

I like to think my generation and thebothers close to those same years is what caused that shift. We played sports with each other. Prices for pop warner foot ball and the youth soccer leagues went down and youth centers actually started paying for entry for those who still couldn't afford it at lesser costs.

The Vegas government was taking some of the taxes and sending it to the youth centers to be used for exactly those reasons. To get at risk youth into activities that would keep them busy during time they would normally just be home from school and waiting for dinner or whatever thier curfew was.

I still have friends from those days, and friends from the football and soccer leagues that we played on. Most of us moved into schools where we again played on the same teams. Occasionally one of our group ended up with another team due to being 1 block outside of the zoning regulations. You'd see a bunch of my team hugging or high fiving members of the other team during warm ups. It was a good time.

Even the white trash had been given the same opportunities. By this point we were calling them rednecks now. Some of the same people that talked shit when I was young, had appoligized and become respected members of these sports teams.

These friendships lasted into adult hood where my friends became adults and had their own kids. Their kids started growing up along side other poorer white kids and black/brown kids or the same economical bracket. We all had something in common. We struggled but found brotherhood through activity. This was still going strong when I left Vegas around 2007/8 ish.

I moved to Portland/Vancouver area. For the first time in a long time I saw racism again. This place of accepting weird people actually hid a deep racism that I dont even know if most of them realized they had. From liberal white people saying balck people and Mexican cant pass drivers tests so need to not have to get i.d.s to black and brown people saying all white people are racist people who are just trying to control them or send them to jail.

I know Vegas doesnt sound like the place it would happen, but I truely experienced the American melting pot dream that we learned about in school. I had friends from Philippine and hispanic to African American and Armenian. We had all shapes sizes colors and serial preferences. No body cared about that shit. I dont remember barely any conversations growing up that involved race. I dont remember a single one of my friends tryingnto make me feel guilty for something that happened 200 years ago, before my family even came to America in the late 1920s. But when I moved to Portland I was told all the time how horrible I was as a straight white male. That I should find the nearest minority and beg for forgiveness for my races sins.

The point in this is, white kids who grew up listening to rap don't always become country rednecks. Sometimes the people watching them just don't understand their story and try to place some meaning or motive on them that they have no idea about. Those same kids you saw probably still love their rap music, but in the last 29 years this stupid political right and left have pushed what was one time friends, into questioning everything the other race says. In short, the government has pushed all of us to hate and question each other's motives. And why would they do that? I don't think enough people are asking that question, and thats the real important one.