Tess Junge,
St. Paul, MN
Growing up in a small town as a white person, I really didn’t have an understanding of racism. It wasn’t taught in our underfunded school of 300 kids that would have been exclusively white if not for the two students of color. Using textbooks that were two decades old, we were taught slavery and racism existed at some point but Martin Luther King Jr. fixed everything. We were taught that we lived in the northern United States and racism just didn’t exist in the North. Looking back, there were so many things people, often adult figures, would say that were extremely prejudiced. It was, to put it lightly, not a welcome environment for any racial diversity. Moving to a larger metropolitan area was like a whole other world. I had no idea things like police brutality, red lining, environmental racism, and so many other things even existed. I’ve learned a lot over the years and my home town has become more diverse but it still has a long way to go.
