I gave your article 25 claps, the most I've ever given anyone on Medium! Your journey and mine seem to have taken similar paths, and I couldn't agree more with what you say. My Mexican wife and I have been married for going on 53 years. She was and still is the most beautiful woman I've ever met, both on the inside and out.

We were married in 1973 in the LA Harbor aea where, except for a single 3-year hiatus, we've lived the entire time. In the mid-1980s, I took a sabbatical and we moved temporarily to New Mexico where I went to purchase land/real estate.

While in NM, I took a teaching job, with the disrict's understanding that I'd be there for a year, two at the most. My wife came by the school one day at lunchtime to drop something off for me. When she entered, I introduced her to three teacher-coworkers. To my dismay, they didn't so much as acknowledge her presence. We were both thoroughly put out by the incident. My best guess? Maybe she was too brown for the room.

At the time, our five-year-old daughter was in kindergarten. We had a bilingual (English-Spanish) household, and knew New Mexico has a large Hispanic population and many Spanish speakers. So, we figured that, although her school instruction would only be in English, she'd likely have Spanish-speaking classmates.

But what we didn't expect was that she'd stop speaking Spanish at home! Her mother continued to speak to her only in Spanish, but she would now only reply in English. What's going on?

Although I liked my teaching job, we longed to return to our beloved Southern California beach community home. So, after three years, we did. And the racism we experienced in New Mexico did not follow us.

As our daughter grew older, she began opening up to me about some of what she had experienced in that particular kindergarten class. She stopped speaking Spanish because she came to recognize it as "the bad language," while English was "the good language."

Like most children, she was sensitive. And perceptive. And she clearly picked up on the prevailing attitude about what was in favor and what was not. And English was, and Spanish was not. Was this the teachers? The other kids? The community? We never really knew for sure but that was definitely the attitude.

Our daughter is now in her forties, and laments to this day how her first language was pushed away and out of her very being. She has since tried to maintain her Spanish, and speaks it where and when she can, especially with her mother. But that beautiful fluency she once had is gone. Just one of the lasting effects of racist intolerance practiced on children.

Oh, one more thing. You speak of karma and accountability, and how not speaking up enables wrong behavior to continue. I'm now in my mid-80s and am wheelchair-bound. But I too was a gym rat, and maintained a chiseled physique, mainly because I've always kept myself in shape (still do, above the bad knees), but also so no one would try to act tough with me. I wouldn't stand for racist bullying, but all the racist bullies had to do was take one look at me. And, of course, it was all over, since, as you know, bullies aren't the bravest lot.

I was still a gym regular when Trump first became president. And whenever his white supremacist ilk began mouthing off, if I was in the immediate vicinity, I'd never let it go unnoticed. I wouldn't stick my chest out, I'd just let them know I didn't appreciate the demeaning and racist things they'd say about "them," of those they felt to be of lesser worth.

So what was the upshot of all that? Whenever I'd go in the gym, they'd always give me a wide berth and go somewhere else. It's amazing how much of the gym I kept having to myself.

I could go on, but look at the space I've already taken! Wow! Look at what your insightful article did. Thanks for sharing this with us, Walter.