Piano World Home Page Forums Restricted and Archives The Coffee Room Are you a minority?

Not to get personal or expose anyone's anonymity, I'm just curious as to how many people on this forum are minorities. Either an 'officially' recognized minority or you feel like a minority for one reason or another.

If you feel like a minority, please state why. Also note that I'm not talking about feeling like a minority on this forum. I'm talking about out in the real world.

If an 'official' minority, feel free to state what minority group you are a member of if you feel comfortable. Otherwise just state 'official minority'.

One last thing, have you ever been discriminated against because of it? Please state how you were discriminated against if you feel comfortable doing so.

Thanks,
Derick

I am definitely a minority. I am the only one like me!

Sorry Derick, couldn't resist that one.

Yes Derick, I am a member of several minorities;

Physically, almost racially, I am an albino, hence one of my nicknames, The Polar Bear. There is approximately 1 albino for every 100,000 people and the odds of having more than one in the same family are likewise quite high. However, my youngest sister is one too so our family beat the odds. It is a trait that occurs in all three major races and seems to be on the statistical increase.

Because of this I am legally blind, another minority.

My measured IQ places me in the upper 7% of the measured human population. One of my biggest personal issues has been to recognize with genuine compassion that most people are just not as smart. I may not yet be finished with this process but thankfully I've had enough time to develop more compassion and patience.

Apparently I belong to a minority when it comes to musical preferences too. No matter how much I might enjoy other music, I just can't take it as seriously as classical music. An old friend of mine in NYC once said that to her JS Bach was the greatest artist who ever lived, working in any medium. I guess there's a large part of me that agrees.

My personal religious and political convictions are pretty peculiar too, and I often feel like I'm in a minority when for whatever reason people can't seem to see things the way I do.

I belong to a life experience category, that you share with me, that we've been widowed. I'm still single, but I belong to a growing number of single parents, having two daughters, one 21 and about to get married and another who just turned 15.

Finding many other people who understand me or for whatever reasons can even abide me, as apparently I'm fairly intense, has been difficult. I pretty much stopped actively looking and have decided it's best to let God provide, as God did before and if it's God's will, well the next right person for me will cross my path.

I am 100% Korean, although I was born in the United States. I wonder what I'd be like if I was born in Korea however...

I too have a high IQ that sometimes alienizes me, I have a hard time socializing with almost anybody, because I can't have a stimulating conversation with most people. My musical tastes also do the same, while everybody's dancing and bouncin' to the latest rap, reggae, or hip-hop, I'm thinking, "What the heck is this crap? You expect me to dance to whatever this guy is singing about?" Yep, the good ol' waltz for me (just kidding).

I too have to deal with accepting that most people aren't at the same level as I am, but I have a hard time doing that sometimes, considering that half my school is comprised of drugging, smoking (I understand that this is a little less, but still), excessively drinking, dumb people who do nothing but cut class and talk about how high they got yesterday, or last period... psh.

So what if I'm not immensely popular? I feel good about myself knowing things.

Minority? Sure, multiple ways too. David Burton, I'd invite you for some coffee, if only I was like, not in school and stuff. Some great discussions could be had.

I guess my marriage belongs to the minority which transcend race and culture. The positives definitely outweigh the negatives though.

I am feeling increasingly alien to the ethos of the society in which I find myself, sometimes painfully so. Therefore the life of the mind is becoming more important as I age.

"From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were, I have not seen,
As others saw, I could not bring
My passions from a common spring"

- E.A. Poe

That describes me perfectly.

We all know racism doesn't exist in America.

If you aren't being sarcastic then you are insane.

I am 100 % Turkish, It is impossible to be 100% of a country, IF you were not born in that country!!!

I fit into a few minority groups. I'm a woman, a Pagan and a homosexual. People have said that I am highly intelligent, but I've no idea what my IQ is. (I have low self-esteem, so I don't feel qualified to make the call anyhow.) I am a minority on these boards in that I'm probably the worst piano player here. :rolleyes: Plus, you guys know more about classical music than I'll ever know.

Hilary - who will be moved into her new apartment tomorrow

I'm mostly Cherokee. But I look more like a Scot. I qualify to own land on the reservation though, and if you do a little research on that, you'll find that this isn't easy. You *must* be able to prove your ancestry.

And you white people name your sports teams with ethnic Indian slurs. But we don't care. We like it. We just don't like it when you stand those wooden Indians outside your doors holding cigars.

When we play ball, we name our teams things like "The Mighty Whiteys" and stand wooden carvings of geeks with pocket protectors holding Palm Pilots outside our stores.... (just kidding about the geek thing)....

On the reservation we sell tens of thousands of little rubber hatchets to you, and we take heavy cardboard tubes and tie stretched pieces of inner tube on the ends and sell tens of thousands of little rubber headed drums to you.... we pluck our turkeys and then dye the feathers with Easter egg dye and sell you tens of thousands of cheap little head dresses, and then we sit and watch you walk around town on the reservation wearing your little Easter egg dyed turkey feather head dress as you thump on your little cardboard tube rubber headed drum with your rubber headed hatchet as you ask questions like "are you people allowed off the reservation after dark?" and wonder how you ever managed to kill us all off.......



(just adding a little humor)

Ted, your statement speaks to me.

Would you elaborate?

Not so fast! There are very few out there who play worse than I do, so we may have the makings of a bet here.

However, after 5 (count 'em, 5!) piano lessons I now have a repertoire of 3 (count 'em, three!) pieces (little pieces), and can do a passable job on 6 scales.

Who said you can't teach old electricians new tricks....

Steve may I ask what pieces they are?

You may, although I admit that confessing the simplicity of these "pieces" to a poster named "Classical Player", to say nothing of the other accomplished and august contributers to this forum has me feeling a bit sheepish.

From the "Bastien Piano for Adults Book 2" ("A beginning course: Lessons, Theory, Technique and Sight Reading") I now have a gold star pasted over "Meet me in St. Louis, Louis," "East River Boogie" and "Good Morning Blues". Im currently struggling with "Prelude in G" and "The Holly and the Ivy".

I have vowed to stop playing the way I used to play as it is all wrong in terms of fingering, and probably everything else but occasionally I lapse. Kim helps keep me on the straight-and-narrow ("Dad! If you keep playing like that you are never going to learn to do it right! Stop it right now!) and I am determined to make up for lost time.

Thanks for asking!

I am not that good compared to some people in here thats for sure!

Keep up the good work!, and yes fingering is very important!

Steve:

It's the combined effect of a large number of phenomena. It is not nostalgia and I am neither misanthropic nor noticeably eccentric. It has much to do with everyday life and little to do with metaphysical, religious or philosophical considerations.

It is a simple organic response to what I perceive as the systematic erosion of collective common sense. "Let's all push the accelerator even if we don't know where the car is going", as J.B. Priestley once put it. Speed has become identical to good. Changing printer ribbons at work and eating meals at home are, it seems, tasks to be undertaken with an urgency appropriate for resuscitating a collapsed person.

On a more global scale I am frightened by the explicit and popular abnegation of scientific and rational thought, even among intelligent people. If I am sick I see the doctor, I do not invoke deities and phone psychic hot lines.

Contrary to the majority, I do not sense a regular imperative to spend a large portion of my free time at shopping malls in compulsorily neurotic spending. I suppose this is just the speed principle again applied to economics.

Unlike an increasing percentage of drivers and pedestrians, I do not enter the exits, leave by the entrances and proceed at speed through stop signs. In my naivety I think that the suggested order may assist the flow of everyday commerce - wrong again, it seems.

Ah but you see, Steve, I have my music, in the creation of which I can be totally mad, totally selfish and yield to every imaginable desire, irrationality and fiendish impulse.

Just as well.

My teacher gives me stickers in my book, too. Taking piano lessons sometimes makes me feel about 5 years old. Being an adult student makes me part of a rather misunderstood minority. Ever get that puzzled, amused look when you tell someone that you are taking piano lessons?

Besides that, I am Chinese by ancestry. The greatest difficulty I have encountered is that every white person I know wants to take me to their favorite Chinese restaurant. They always insist that it has the best, most authentic Chinese food around. It invariably turns out to be terrible and then I have to be polite to not hurt their feelings after their enthusiastic recommendations.

Now the fun part is when I get to take them to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants. They are surprised when presented with so many dishes that they have never seen before. They have no idea what they are eating........and I don't tell them until much, much later.

"Now the fun part is when I get to take them to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants. They are surprised when presented with so many dishes that they have never seen before. They have no idea what they are eating........and I don't tell them until much, much later."

Gee, Nancy - I want to go to a chinese restaurant with you! Thanks for the laugh! Jodi

One of the things I find worth doing whenever I go to a restaurant serving ethnic or regional foods I do not understand is to explain to the waiter/waitress that I know nothing about their food and ask to have the chef prepare a medley of dishes. Most of the time they agree and whenever they have, I have found it a most enjoyable and interesting experience. Knowing what I am doing, the waiter/waitress usually are very open in explaining what it is we are eating, what is in it and other tidbits of information. Often, but not always, the chef will come out and talk with us as well.

If price is an object, it is also best to tell the waiter/waitress the price range you want the meal to be in per person -- but assume it will be in the upper levels of what is on the menu. This helps them choose better so that they do not lose money and you are not shocked with the bill.

For someone who has dined on nutra rat chili, alligator sauce piquante, chitlins, catfish head stew, eels and red boudain (the kind made with fresh hog blood), I would look forward with great gastronomic gusto to whatever the chef can prepare.

Don't knock it, if you haven't ate it!

Does a Quaker anarcho-communo-eco-libertarian pacifist with femino-anti-capitalist tendencies and a lemon twist count?

Jolly,

The Cantonese make a jello-like substance out of pig's blood. I don't know if it is similar to what you are referring to but it is great in hot and sour soup.