“Wow! You’re so dark, how long did you spend in the sun?”

As I got older I started to realize the differences more, and that I had light skin tone, and I spoke differently than Blacks in my area did.

I think it’s normal that kids, as they get older, gravitate to their own race, or to whichever race they identify with, Since there were no Asian’s in my school except wanna-be-gangster Asians, I gravitated towards white people and tried to avoid black people at all costs, like they had the plague.

Then I was suddenly thrown in to a gym class that had mostly Black or Black mixed children. I sat next to this Black girl named Lianna,and we looked at each other awkwardly for days before she finally said: “Ugh, it’s hot in here.”

And we started talking a lot. I started noticing, that we liked a lot of the same things, had similar hobbies, hated the same classes, and I suddenly realized: the only thing different about this girl from me was that she had dark skin, and I had white skin.

And at that time I realized how horridly it had been to avoid anyone like that, and I had been acting the way my parents had, and that was NOT how I wanted to grow up: hating people because of the way they looked, and because of their differences.

After that, I had so many friends from different places, I was surprised at how much I was learning now that I stopped avoiding people I had previously considered to be ‘different’.

And I wouldn’t have any of my best friends if I hadn’t stopped that thinking.

Feel free to delete all these comments, too! I am just letting you know and I am not sure what email that goes to!

Becky