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I survived the white flight.

3274_84431137512_1064133_n1Misty Johnson,
Lilburn, GA.

I moved to Georgia in 1988 when I was 8 years old. My father left his job on the oil rigs to start his own landscaping company in Lithonia, Georgia. I was a minority at my elementary school back in Texas, which was predominately Hispanic. The move to Atlanta was different because of the largeer African American population. After a year or so of living in the suburban neighborhood, all of the white people started moving. My family didn’t have the means to move but within a year and a half I was the only white girl in my class in school. My nickname was actually white girl at one point and I really absorbed the African America culture. I even went so far as to get braids in my hair to look like Janet Jackson from Poetic Justice. (Loved that movie) There is no way anybody can ever tell me that race does not play a role in who you are or how you are perceived. Who I’am today was shaped by by my childhood of being around different cultures and races.

Racism is shameful and diminishes us.

Teresa Lynn Rutledge
Lilburn, GA

Growing up in the South, I saw racism that was accepted because “that was just the way it was.” But at the age of 7, I got my first up close and personal lesson about its meanness. A teenage boy encouraged me to call our maid the N word because I had done something I wasn’t supposed to (don’t remember what), and she made me go outside. When I pranced into the house after calling her that, she stopped me and asked me how I would feel if someone called me an ugly name. I was ashamed and heartbroken because I really loved her. That lesson has stayed with me for 51 years, and I have never repeated that horrible act of cruelty, and I still cringe whenever I hear that word used.

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