I was taught that all people are equal at a very early age. I remember when I was about 5 years old, my mom’s best friend was a black woman. The fact that she was a maid for the rich family who owned the company my mother worked for was something that I did not comprehend at a young age.
Once a week, my mom would take us to the company softball games, the team of which was heavily populated by the black men who worked in the factory. Then after the games, my mom would go with her girlfriend to a black bar. While I was aware that it was black bar, it was not something I cared about or concerned myself with. We ran around and played as all children do.
I went to a private Christian elementary school called St. Mary’s. We had black students, but they were very rare, so rare that there were only about one per grade. Their rarity made them special and there was no racism that I was aware of. What I was too young (or too white?) to understand is what it must have felt like to be the only person of color in an entirely white class.
In 9th grade, at a private Christian high school, I befriended a Haitian girl. Yolanda. She and I became very close that year. In hindsight, I probably latched on to her because I didn’t want her to be alone. I was trying to protect her and let her know that she had a friend.
For the rest of my high school years, I transferred to a larger public school where racial riots were in full force. Thankfully, I never had a problem. I like to think it was because I treated everyone equally.
However, as I said, I am not perfect. I remember one day when I was in my twenties, I was carrying groceries into my apartment building and a black man was walking behind me. He asked if he could help. I said no thank you. I like to think that it was more because he was a stranger than the fact that he was black, but he ended up being a friend of my neighbor John across the way, and I said, oh you’re a friend of John’s. If I had known I would have let you help. And he asked if he had been white would I have let him help? And I honestly don’t know the answer. To this day, this situation still haunts me.
When I reached around my forties, that’s when I learned that treating everyone equally is not enough to eliminate racism. I learned that black people, particularly black women, don’t want their color to be invisible, but rather, they want to embrace their color and want others to embrace it too.
I try not to judge people and to accept everyone for their true selves. But I realize that I am not perfect and I hope to continue to learn and grow in my humanity and my compassion. I pray that others will too.
