Rae Ann McInnis,
Towson, MD
9th grade. All girl Catholic High School. I planned a sleepover and had about four or five of my friends invited, the first time to my house by about three of them. The next day at school I asked everyone where they were coming from. Rene, one of the girls I was particularly fond of, had to look me in the face, and, clearly uncomfortable, she says, “Mom said I can’t come.” “Why?” “You’re white.” Earlier in my life, we lived in Massachusetts, on The Cape, and it was there I heard of race discrimination probably for the first time. “they’re Portuguese”, I overheard. As though it were a slur. I simply did not understand, I wasn’t brought up that way.
