Jake Skillman
Greenfield, IN
Even as a small child I loved diversity, insisting on going to Korean school on Saturdays with my friends, checking out language books in Romanian, Japanese, Spanish and even Swahili. It’s crazy, because I grew up on a country farm, living in a trailer. Some how that automatically made me a “red-neck racist piece of white trash”. I’ve been crushed and heart broken so many times while reaching out to others only to be rejected or not trusted because I’m white, and “whites are racists.” Growing up I felt buried by someone else’s sin. I never figured out how white equals racist. I learned the history, but knew I was not like that. My family wasn’t. Things like affirmative action, and terms like “reverse discrimination” stung, and reeked of lessons on racism not learned. Clubs at school like Nation Black Scholars, Hispanic club, and Asian American society, were groups I wasn’t allowed to join because of my skin color. Yet there weren’t clubs that specified my race. I wasn’t born racist I was simply born white. But I suffered the “justified” version of racism. One day society will learn that any form of racism is wrong & shouldn’t be supported or kept alive. When we judge even whites, by their color, we keep racism on life support in an effort to prove we can control it. But can we? Do we fight fire with fire? Use racism to defeat racism? Offer up an excuse why we can use racism for a positive outcome? I pray in the future that it can be said of a white male child, “Not born racist, just born a human.”
