Jennifer
Ashland, KY
I am from a small city in Kentucky… people automatically think “Do you have your teeth”, “Do you wear shoes”, “She hates “colored” people”.. while all of these are simply uneducated guesses. I truly didn’t realize how bad racism was until I got older and in high school. I went to a VERY “red neck” high school.. and being that I was raised to treat everyone the same.. I befriended the 12 black students in our entire school made up of over 2000 people. I was constantly being called a “n!gger lover” and was even told that I would be hung in my back yard with all of my “n!gger friends”. I always fought my way through school and always stood up for what I believed in.
So, my senior year in school I decided I would take a trip to Texas with one of my friends to see my bf. My bf and I, both “white”, went to Wal Mart to get a few things for the week. It didn’t take long for me to quickly notice we were the ONLY two “white” people in the store. I began to understand what it felt like to be a minority. People were staring and whispering and I just ignored it and smiled. That was until I was standing at the end of an aisle and a little “black” girl walking with (who I would guess to be) her mother and sister, stopped and looked at me with a blank face. I felt very uncomfortable and just smiled. She then tugs on her mothers jacket and says, “Momma, what’s the WHITE GIRL doing here?” My smile quickly turned to a frown and I put my stuff in the cart and had my bf check out while I sat in the car. I had NEVER felt so uncomfortable!
The point of this story is… racism works all ways.. not just towards blacks, chinese, hispanics…. Whichever way your story goes… it still isn’t right! We’re all the same color when we turn out the light!
