Kids on Color

Racial Profiling

Alissa — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:34:56 +0000

An event that stuck with me is the arrest of an African man staying with a family friend. He was out for a walk on a bike path, listening to his Walkman and dancing around, which caught the attention of the police nearby. They approached him, tried to talk to him and question him, and as he reached to turn the volume down to hear them they raised their guns, tackled him, he was brought to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested.

Busing

Alissa — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:21:57 +0000

I grew up in Norway, South Carolina. We immediately noticed that we had a lot of blacks, in that community. And that they were treated differently. Our school, I was 9th grade when we had our first blacks to come to school with us, and they rode our bus. They sat ‘em on the front seats, it was a sister and a brother, and they sat ‘em on the front seat, and somebody from the back of the bus threw a book and hit one of upside the head, right in back. And so the next day, the NAACP was there. And the person who threw the book got expelled. You know, stuff like that’s going happen. It was strange to have that happen.

Kate’s Story

Alissa — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:15:03 +0000

Kate, of Chinese origin, remembers when she first went to elementary school and realized that she did not look like most of her White classmates out in the New York suburb she grew up in. She saw that all her classmates had blond hair and blue eyes and she remembers wanting those features for a long time as a child. It was only as she got older did she start to see her features as desirable, and she wonders how her daughter, now two years old, will relate to similar experiences.

Katya’s Story

Alissa — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:58:21 +0000

When I first came to the US, I lived in an apartment complex filled with other international families. I never really thought about race or the fact that I was different at first. The first time I probably felt out of place was the first day of school when I was in 5^th grade. I wore a shirt and shorts while all the “cool” girls had Gap sweatshirts. I remember them looking at me and making comments. As soon as I went home, I told my mom that I needed to get a Gap sweatshirt. They were expensive and we couldn’t afford them at the time. For Christmas, I got the Gap sweatshirt and I immediately felt cool and had much more confidence.

Carlo’s Story

Alissa — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:48:31 +0000

When I first arrived in the United States, my obstacles to making friends were primarily cultural. Coming from a truly multicultural society, it was hard adapting to a culture where people divided themselves according to historical ethnic backgrounds. Having had a teacher in high school who espoused the justness of the Nation of Islam, for example, and me being black and Jewish, it set up for some strange and uncomfortable interactions. Those eventually led to me having to change classes. This was one of the first times I felt that my race was put into question. It affected the way I approached people in the future. The forms of discrimination I was subjected to were only from people who tended to share my skin color. There was a disconnect on how I approached social attitudes in the US, compared on what I was used to. I was never as aware of my skin color, as when I moved to the US. I was even told that I was too intellectual, and not emotionally demure enough about societal struggles that people felt they were fighting on a daily basis.

Sara’s Story

Alissa — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:35:16 +0000

One incident that I think my parents found kind of fascinating was when I was four years old. That was the first time we traveled outside of Pakistan, and we went to the States, to the UK, and Turkey. I was four years old and I bought my first Barbie. I chose it myself and it was a black Barbie. My parents were sort of interested as to why I went for a black Barbie – it’s not like she looked like me. But I remember just wanting a ballerina Barbie, and it made absolutely no difference to me. [My parents] are very liberal, very open-minded so they had no issues with that. They were just amused that I had made that choice on my own, of somebody who doesn’t look like me, basically. I had been used to dolls that were kind of generic, in terms of color and race. I think that I wasn’t aware of things then.

Rachel’s Story

Alissa — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:35:02 +0000

I grew up in a very small town. All the members of the town were White and Catholic. If they weren’t Catholic, they lived in the next town over, but they were still White. As a child I probably would have had to travel thirty miles in any direction to see someone who was of a different race than myself. For this reason, any realization I had that other races are different from me, and that plays a role in how I think, was quite delayed.

The first time I made this sort of realization was probably in my first semester at college. Anytime before that, I would have been under the protection of my parents whenever I was around a diverse group of people. With my parents, any noted differences in the people around me were not accompanied by any sense of fear of those differences. In college, then, the situation changed and I was responsible for myself.

I started at Temple University, which loves to claim that it has one of the most diverse campuses of anywhere you can go. During the first weeks, I can remember looking around and feeling smaller than I ever have. I was the minority for once, and I was uncomfortable with that. I didn’t understand my feelings. I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me, or why I should really even notice. I had been brought up to think that everyone was created equal. I learned about the evils of racism every year in school. Temple had told me how diverse they were in almost every piece of mail I got from them. Still, it took me a while to get used to.

I feel bad that I felt entitled to be a majority or something. I cannot think of a single instance growing up where I was encouraged to feel superior, so why should I feel unsafe or even slightly threatened when I am surrounded by others who are of a different race? Why is race the first thing I notice when meeting new people? I would like to blame it on my sheltered upbringing; claim that anyone would feel the same when thrown into an environment so entirely

The Klan

Alissa — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:51:46 +0000

I lived in a pretty rural community when I was growing up, and every quarter or so, the Klan would come by and leave a magazine or some propaganda letting you know, the Klan is here, how to join, and I can even remember when I was small they would do marches and stuff like that in Charleston, and I think it was probably my earliest memory. And, I actually didn’t realize that they would come by and drop off the magazine, my dad told me years later that they used to do that. And I was shocked, I mean this must have been in the early 90′s, that the Klan was still, that prevalent, to come by and drop off literature to people’s houses. They would come at night and drop it off in your driveway. They would advertise that they were still prevalent and they would actually have marches in Charleston when I was little

“Especially in Front of White People”

Alissa — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 03:00:35 +0000

In 1st grade, I told my black teacher, in front of white teachers, a fellow black student called me a nigger. They all gave me astonished looks and later my black teacher was upset with me and I couldn’t understand what I had done. She told me that word was not something to repeat, especially not in front of white people. In 5th grade we went on a trip to D.C.. We were supposed to get a tour of the white house. We stood outside for hours waiting after several groups of predominantly white kids went inside. Our teachers took us away upset. They never said to us that they felt something racial had taken place but I personally could not help assume just that.

Neil’s Story

Alissa — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:12:35 +0000

My first short-lived romance was when I was three or four years old with a little girl I met in the mall. We called each other girlfriend and boyfriend while our parents watched us play and hold hands. Without the photograph I don’t think my parents would have ever told me my first girlfriend was black. My parents always referred to people as people not as their race. This probably has a lot to do with why I did not see racial identity as a young child. It is not strange to me that my first pretend relationship was with someone of a different racial identity, but it is interesting that I didn’t even recognize a difference.

After I first heard someone refer to a person as black, I asked my mother what I was. My mother told me that I was white and I become upset and confused. I adamantly refused to be white and instead insisted that I was pink. The binary black/white opposition of race did not make sense to me as a child who was confident in a knowledge of primary and secondary colors.