My Racism

My Racism

First Recollections:

As a young child, we lived in the Northwest. For much of my formative years our family lived in Montana, in a community where I do not remember even knowing anyone of another skin color. Not just black, but any other racial identity that was not Caucasian (though my father was the first Non-Native American to teach courses on the Blackfoot Reservation nearby).

Right before my fourth grade year in school, our family moved to Syracuse, New York for my father to attend Syracuse University. My Mom and Dad, my younger brother, sister, and I lived in the married student housing on campus. Syracuse University is an incredibly diverse community and we had friends and neighbors from India, Syria, Jordan, Bangladesh, Portugal, etc... It never even registered as unusual to me despite not having had previous contact with people who looked so different and sounded so different. My siblings and I had wonderful loving parents who taught us God loved every human because He created them. So this was our paradigm, and it remained unquestioned by me for many years.

During the first few weeks at an inner city elementary school (in Syracuse), this paradigm was challenged by violence and fear. While in the lunch line, I was pushed by the girl behind me into the girl in front of me on purpose, to start a fight. The girl in front of me turned around and slugged me. To the best of my recollection, I had never been hit in the face before like this. Both girls were black, and unfortunately it created a distinct and immediate visceral reaction in me to dislike black people. On the way home I was crying and told my mom I hated black people! I had never been in a physical fight with anyone before and associated it with race immediately, it was horrifying and scary to me that someone could hate me enough to be violent like that, and since it had not happened to me before, as a child I made an immediate assumption.

My mother calmly sat me down and explained further about bad and good, and how evil works in this world. She was very calming and understanding of my fear. While not dismissing my feelings she carefully navigated the situation to lead me into an understanding of how the truth of evil in this world would come from all sorts of people in life. Although I knew that intellectually, that all people had this potential for evil (many Caucasian bullies in grade school in Montana had made my life a living hell daily), the shock of the physical violence made an impression which could have been permanent, had I not had the mom I have.

What to do Now:

Moving forward from this event, I worked hard to be a person who deserved to have friends of all walks of life and to try and understand every individual. My successes and failings in this regard have shaped me, through the work of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ into who I am today. But it isn’t without work and self-examination. Every one of us is guilty of wanting others to change, we should all actually begin by examining our own biases, experiences, thoughts, and feelings so that we can behave in ways beneficial to all humans in our society.

One of the key things I take away from this recent time of turbulence in the United States, as a culmination of an alarming trend, is that I need to be vigilant, raise my voice, teach my family and friends if they need it, and keep the conversation moving forward!