My parents were laborers so we lived on South Park, which was a low-income region of Seattle. You had a choice - you either joined or formed a gang or you let others bully you.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I grew up in Seattle, but I always knew I wanted to leave.
During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor black neighborhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge, and twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies.
As a child, I lived through and survived the segregated South. I sat at the back of the bus at a time when America wasn't yet as great as it could be.
Because I lived in construction towns, we had a lot of workers who came from the South. They were all white, and, sorry to say, a number of them were pretty redneck.
I grew up in the suburbs.
Contrary to public opinion and the image people have of me, I grew up in a very lower-middle-class, blue-collar environment 40 minutes outside of New York until I was 11.
I can think of no one that my grandparents knew, that told me stories and that I experienced myself, had any sense of social inferiority growing up in segregated Washington. None whatsoever.
I grew up in a trailer park in Bellingham, Washington.
I grew up in Los Angeles when the racial tensions between blacks and Mexicans were very high. Gang violence was very prevalent.
I grew up in a modest neighborhood just outside of Los Angeles. It was an industrial community of blue-collar, working people... some of the hardest-working people I've ever met.