My first experience with race was coloring a playground of children in first or second grade. Someone must have mentioned white people and black people to me before that, but I obviously didn't understand it, because I was coloring one of the kids with my black crayon because I wanted all kinds of kids to play together. My teacher caught me before I started to color another kid with the white crayon. Heh.
I got a huge lecture and my picture was taken away, and for a long time I thought I'd been bad, though I didn't understand why. Poor Miss Maple. Of course, in college I was looking through one of my anthro books and ran across a picture of a man in Africa - oh I'm blanking on the tribe, but one of the ones around the Sahara - and he was black (blackberry, as my HS French teacher would say), and my first thought was, "Ha! There are SO black people, Miss Maple!" Never let it be said I can let an old wrong go forgotten. *sweatdrop*
That was the same class with the round table of students who didn't learn with the rest of us. I didn't realize until I was thinking about race some fifteen years later that they were probably there because their skin color was different. I just remembering wanting to know if it was ok for me to talk to them, and one time when I smiled at one of them and he just sort of looked away...
They always seemed so sad, but I didn't know if I could help so I didn't do anything. I feel vaguely bad for that sometimes, and wonder if they thought I was staring for some other reason and wished I would go away.
I rarely think of myself as "white" except around people who seem to treat me as if I'm "white," though. Like, in High School my nicknames were Vanilla Milkshake and Wonder bread (white, light, and full of hot air!) and I always felt inferior to my friends because of how rich and vivid their cultures and histories were. That really pushed me into exploring my heritage, and I do find a certain amount of pride in my Danish, German, Scotts-Welch and Scotts-Irish heritage. I have some of my clan tartan, and I covet the painting of the rulers of Denmark. I'm not sure any of this gives me much on the whole, though, in the context of how much pain people have suffered due to peopl who look a lot like me.
I honestly don't know if I'm racist or not. I'm not even sure what that means, in this age of people hiding their true feelings under a layer of PCness. I try very hard to be friends with people because I like them, and not due to any physical characteristics, but my circle of offline friends is somewhat disturbingly uniform in hue and that bugs me in a vague way in the back of my head.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-04-03 04:53 am (UTC)I got a huge lecture and my picture was taken away, and for a long time I thought I'd been bad, though I didn't understand why. Poor Miss Maple. Of course, in college I was looking through one of my anthro books and ran across a picture of a man in Africa - oh I'm blanking on the tribe, but one of the ones around the Sahara - and he was black (blackberry, as my HS French teacher would say), and my first thought was, "Ha! There are SO black people, Miss Maple!" Never let it be said I can let an old wrong go forgotten. *sweatdrop*
That was the same class with the round table of students who didn't learn with the rest of us. I didn't realize until I was thinking about race some fifteen years later that they were probably there because their skin color was different. I just remembering wanting to know if it was ok for me to talk to them, and one time when I smiled at one of them and he just sort of looked away...
They always seemed so sad, but I didn't know if I could help so I didn't do anything. I feel vaguely bad for that sometimes, and wonder if they thought I was staring for some other reason and wished I would go away.
I rarely think of myself as "white" except around people who seem to treat me as if I'm "white," though. Like, in High School my nicknames were Vanilla Milkshake and Wonder bread (white, light, and full of hot air!) and I always felt inferior to my friends because of how rich and vivid their cultures and histories were. That really pushed me into exploring my heritage, and I do find a certain amount of pride in my Danish, German, Scotts-Welch and Scotts-Irish heritage. I have some of my clan tartan, and I covet the painting of the rulers of Denmark. I'm not sure any of this gives me much on the whole, though, in the context of how much pain people have suffered due to peopl who look a lot like me.
I honestly don't know if I'm racist or not. I'm not even sure what that means, in this age of people hiding their true feelings under a layer of PCness. I try very hard to be friends with people because I like them, and not due to any physical characteristics, but my circle of offline friends is somewhat disturbingly uniform in hue and that bugs me in a vague way in the back of my head.