Chelsea.
I have been “plus sized” my entire life. I come from a town in Indiana called Kokomo, which is about 3 hours south of Chicago. In their news when they report on violence or crime you hear “people from Chicago” or “groups from Chicago” and you know that is code for “scary black people”. When I was entering middle school the city decided to bus kids from my side of town 5 miles away to a struggling north side middle school to “integrate” the black and white kids more. I was the minority in the school as a white girl. A fat white girl, too. They were afraid of the black kids that went to my school. The deciding factor for which of the two schools you went to was a railroad track that was a block from my house. I happened to be on one side and some of my friends with similar stations in life that went to the “white” middle school were on the other side of the tracks. Once I started going to middle school, those kids in my neighborhood on the other side of the railroad track didn’t want to hang out anymore. Once everyone got to high school all the kids from all the middle schools went to one high school. When other kids found out I went to the “black school” or “THAT school” they treated me differently. This time they weren’t just snickering and looking down on mr because I was fat. Now, I’m an “other”. I wasn’t totally white to them. The white kids I went to elementary school with that didn’t have to be bussed into the north side of town and went to a well cared for, nice, award-winning, 95% white middle school thought only poor white people went to that school because the school was in a black neighborhood. They were afraid of the black kids that went to my school. As I got older in high school and boys were something I noticed someone said to me “I bet black guys love you.” Naive me thought they meant because I went to Sycamore middle school I must have had a lot of black boyfriends or something. Then, in our so-called SLIMM gym class for fat students, one of my classmates said they wanted to lose weight because “only black guys like fat girls.” I finally understood that saying “I bet black guys love you” was a way to put me down. It was a way to disparage, vilify, and dehumanize black people. It was a way to say you are less than. THEY are less than. YOU/THEY only deserve a lesser love. I’m incredibly thankful for my time at Sycamore. Those were my favorite years of school growing up. But, I’m ashamed that I didn’t stand my ground more in school to those kids that said racist things. I’m ashamed that my experiences haven’t driven me to raise my voice as a person of privilege against the “all lives matter” people. Writing this has brought back so many memories of being in and out of that school, of my friends at that school. It hurts.
