Not until 5th grade did I realize the pigment of my skin was different from that of my family and the majority of people in my life. It was at this time I had my first encounter with racism. We had moved from Vancouver, WA to Myrtle Beach, SC. I didn’t know about the Civil War, slavery, and the racial injustice at this point in my life, not sure what little kid does. I was your typical 10 year old girl that loved to play “house” and Barbie’s with her friends. The idea that my skin color would play a role in how people treated me never occurred to me.
Naivety is a gift that can be snatched from you without your consent, and mine was taken by a group of black kids that thought I was of mixed race, half black and half white. Due to this incorrect assumption they would tease me mercilessly. They would circle around me and push me back and forth, while taunting me with derogatory slurs. As a kid coming from a home where skin color was not a topic of discussion, it was overwhelming and shocking to be ridiculed for something I had not even taken notice of until that moment. It was in that moment that I realized my skin was lighter than the black kids that hated me and darker than all my white friends and family. It was in that moment that I was no longer colorblind.
Kids are truly ruthless and have no compassion or tolerance for those who lie outside what’s acceptable in their realm. Unfortunately for myself, I lied outside the acceptable realm for many of the youth that I interacted with on a daily basis while residing in South Carolina. I admit, I was no beauty between the ages of 10-15. I had crazy unruly curly hair that hated the humidity and being brushed by my careless hands. As a tween, I was built more like a full grown woman. I was already 5’8” and wore a 34D bra, so I was endowed to say the least. However, I was also built like an athlete. Lean and muscular. In the 90’s that was not the look to have. Waif and heroin thin was all the rage. So, between the black kids hating me because they believed I was mixed racially and some of the older white kids not liking me because they could, my tween/teen years in South Carolina were miserable. I hated it. I hated all the black kids and I hated all the older white kids that picked on me.
Now, don’t think I didn’t have friends. I had many friends in my grade and lower because I’m a resilient type of person that refused to give into other peoples perceptions of me. In fact, I won Student of the Year when I was in 7th grade, but it was the interactions with the black kids and the older white kids that really helped shape my personal insecurities. To this day, I can’t stand when people assume that I am half black because I associate it with all the black kids in middle school that relentlessly picked on me for being racially mixed. I also view myself as an ugly, big nosed, big lipped, fat cow that will never be considered beautiful because I’m not a size 2. It’s been over 20 years since these incidents but they still effect me. Some experiences more deeply than others, but nonetheless, they haunt me.
It’s crazy the experiences and moments you carry with you for a lifetime, but so far these are some of the ones I lug around with me. As I have grown older, I have gotten a little better at accepting certain things about myself but the struggle will always be there camouflaged by my happy and confident exterior.
