I haven't posted in almost 2 years and now I post twice in 1 night. Well, I have a lot to say and I just don't say it all.
So I read this article a friend of mine posted about a guy who asked his friends to explain white privilege to him. I started thinking to myself, what if one of my friends asked me. What would I say?
Well, here is my story about what it was like to be different/unique or black while most people are white.
I was 5 years old and on the bus to school for Kindergarten. The bus had K-6th grade at the time. I sometimes was the only black person on the bus and sometimes there was a boy named Jay Night. Well this day Jay was not on the bus, it was just me. This older boy, a 6th grader called me a nigger. I didn't do anything. I was just a little girl sitting on the bus while black. I cried and cried and went straight to the principal's office when I got to school. I didn't know what the word meant but I knew it wasn't good. That much had been taught to me. I think the boy was suspended or something but I know my dad was called and people were interviewed. It was unpleasant for me.
In 1st grade I had a little boy ask why I did not take a bath. I told him I did and he said No I didn't because I was dirty. I wasn't dirty, I just wasn't white like him.
In 2nd grade I had a girl ask me if she touched me would she change colors? I wasn't a chameleon. She didn't know that and it seemed like I was diseased in her eyes I guess. I just wasn't white like her.
Later on in elementary school or perhaps middle school our bus driver decided we needed to have assigned seats. Mine was at the back of the bus and he didn't see why I had a problem with that. I understood I was one of the first stops to get on the bus but he never saw my reasoning for why I didn't want to sit in the back of the bus. Until the school got involved.
I had to have the school involved again while I was in 8th grade and had a boy moon me on the bus. That boy is now a town council member in town. He had to apologize to me per the school on the phone and write a letter (per his mom). No one else was purposely mooned. I was also the only minority on the bus.
Between elementary school and high school I had many people ask to touch my hair. Do they ask you? No? Well they ask me to touch my hair because it looks different. Like I do.
Oh middle school and high school actually introduced more minorities. Maybe about as many as you could count on your hand.
I lost the girl who I thought was going to be my best friend forever. She actually had another girl (1/2 white, 1/2 black) threaten to beat me up. She has still never told me what happened to this day. It sucks since I see her and our parents live across from each other.
I used to get made fun of all the time. I was the first girl to develop, I was tall, athletic, great at sports. I was almost almost always picked last for whatever activity we were going to do. No one wanted to get near me, touch me, anything.
Figure if these are just for the early years of my life, not even getting me to age 16, and not even all of the stories how many more there are.
Now I am the mother of a young boy who may experience some of the same things I went through. White privilege is a thing and you may not see it. I just ask that you try to see things from a different perspective. I ask that you look at all of the angles. I don't have white privilege to "let me off the hook". I work hard for what I get/have and it is because of me. People try to keep me down and make me feel inferior because of my color. You most likely don't experience these things on a daily basis but if you get a chance, just stop and think what if it was you?
No comments:
Post a Comment