George Sakalian,
Sweden
These were my thoughts when as a small boy in the 1930’s i first heard of “colored people” with no explanation. I lived in an ethnically mixed neighbourhood in the U.S. and played with other small boys…black or white. I never thought of the black boys as being different until some time later when it was explained to me that they were inferior! This, of course, made no sense to me.
As for being treated as inferior, I have learned from my parents of how they had been treated when they lived in Turkey around 1915-1916. They were not acquainted at the time but both managed to escape when the Turks began their ethnic cleansing of Armeniens and other Christian minorities. Millions were slaughtered. They each came from large families and as far as they knew no other family members survived. The Turks still refuse to acknowledge what happened in spite of overwhelming evidence. President Biden’s acknowledgement of this reign of terror was welcomed.
