When I was young, I grew up in a city where the schools were desperately underfunded, and where students in the public school system didn't have a lot of opportunities. Because they wanted me to have the chance for a good education, my parents enrolled me in one of the local private schools. At that school, I was one of two white people in the entire school, the only other white person being the nurse. (All the teachers, all the staff, all the students were black people, except myself and the nurse.) I stood out a bit, as you might imagine. I was a smart kid and I got along with most of the students, so my teachers liked me.
One day, I was walking out of the school just as an older kid was walking in. I don't remember what that student looked like or what their name was, but I remember very clearly what they said.
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"Little white girl," they sneered as I walked past.
Being the fiery little kid I was, I mumbled, “Blacky,” under my breath.
When I got in the car to go home, I told my mom what happened. Her eyes opened wide as she turned to look at me.
“You didn’t.”
That was a quiet car ride home.
Back then, I had no idea why my mother was frustrated with me. I remember thinking, “What? You told me to stand up for myself.”
Now that I’m an adult, I think back to that time pretty frequently. It seemed fair at the time; if that kid was going to pick on me for my skin color, I was going to do it right back. But the thing I didn’t realize as a child was where that anger came from. With media in 2016 buzzing about the murder of more and more black people, I think back to what that kid from my childhood could have been going through to make them feel frustrated or unsafe around me…and I’m horrified by it. Cell phones didn’t have cameras back then, and there certainly was not such a focus on filming police brutality, meaning that I had no real grasp of what many of my friends, classmates and their families may have been going through at the hands of white people like me.
The older I get, the more important I realize it is to pay attention to the struggles of people of color. I’m white; I’ll never understand what it is people of color go through, because this country was not founded on a system of inequality meant to keep people of my particular shade from gaining power. I know that now. I know that it may not be my struggle, which makes it all the more important that I listen to those who are experiencing it first-hand.
I’m certainly not perfect, and I think it’s obvious that I never have been. But I’m learning, I’m trying, and while that alone may not be enough, I’m going to keep trying.
I have to.
