Your hair’s pretty. What are you?
Jessie V. West Sacramento, CA. As a little girl I was always told “you have such pretty hair” and then with that i was asked...
Washtenaw students use The Race Card Project to confront bullying
Powerful words from a high school student—shared during the second annual Youth Diversity Forum with a room full of Washtenaw County high schoolers—helped set the...
What opened my eyes: “flesh-colored” bandages
Irene M. Pepperberg, Swampscott, MA. I was in high school, a racially integrated one, in the 60s, discussing racial issues with a contemporary black woman,...
I hate that there is hate!
Mark Babbitt Clayton, NC I was born in 1954 in Western Massachusetts. I was raised to be color-blind. I still remember a friend of my...
Black leaders belittle their own race
Nancyann Irvin St. Helens, OR I would find it insulting if I were constantly told I was a helpless victim and could not do anything...
You call friends “boy.” I cannot.
Dan Rinzel Washington DC A memory from my junior high school bus in DC in the early 1980’s.
White. Not racist. Tired of accusation.
Marianna Boncek Woodstock, NY I am a high school teacher. I have been accused of being a racist so many times I can’t count. I...
Southern white privilege and racial ambivalence.
David Painter Winter Springs, FL I had a black southern Mammy in 1963 (who I adored), graduated from private, elite, lily-white high school in 1981,...
“Ghetto” is the new “N-word”
M. Griffin Tampa, FL As a public high school teacher I hear this word thrown around often and generally it is applied to brown skinned...
Sterling Whites is my town’s nickname.
Jacob Barshaw Ann Arbor, MI Understanding Race Project- University of Michigan For my entire life I have lived in in a town called Sterling Heights....
Ask black girls out? They’d laugh!
John D Gardner Overland Park, KS I was in high school from 1979 to 1981. During that time there were a few girls that I...
I had never felt so uncomfortable.
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...
Oh, She’s Just Another White Girl
L.C. Phoenix, AZ In youth we never noticed our skins were different shades. We rode the same bus, lived on the same street, were in...
Interracial marriage isn’t a bad thing.
Ryan Wilcox Urbandale, IA My parents moved my sister and I out of Milwaukee in the early 1970’s to avoid the repercussions of desegregation. We...
Racism cannot be stopped with silence.
Alexis C. Oakland, CA Student of Ms. Tunik at Bishop O’ Dowd High School in Oakland, Ca.
Race, always an issue. Really? Really.
Clyde Taylor Milwaukee, WI I’m 56. When I was a teen, I thought that by now (the 21st century) race would be far less an...
