My Experiences as a Person of Color

The first time I saw another face that looked like mine, was at National Jewish hospital. He was a gangly black big with a big head like me and skin like mine. I was at one of the myriad of asthma-related doctors appointments my Mom had to take me to when I was a child. The urban setting where the nation’s leading asthma hospital is situated provided a diversity of population that simply wasn’t present in the pleasant, white-washed suburbs west of Denver.

I always knew that I was different some how. I could look down at my skin and notice that it’s coffee color was not shared by most other people. In the crayon box, flesh was a pinkish color, not the friendly brown that I sported. Everywhere I looked, the world reinforced the narrative: “If you don’t look like this, you’re different.” All of those things start to pile up in the young brain.

I was lucky to be born in the time that I was born in. I recently visited my Father who lives in his home town of Tuscaloosa and he grew up during the height of Jim Crow. His mother worked as a waitress in the University of Alabama cafeteria. She worked at a University where she, as a black woman, could not send her children until 1965 and where she experienced casual racism daily. Even though society, through subtle racism, programmed me as “different” on a daily basis, it was nothing compared to the overt racism that my Father grew up with on Alabama where he had to walk through a town that had entire buildings cut off from him simply because of the color of his skin. To our modern mind, it might seem anachronistic but millions of people grew up with that reality. From red lined neighborhoods in Chicago and Detroit to the Jim Crow South, part of the fabric of this country is racism not only against the descendents of slaves but against anyone deemed “other.”

Because of my more middle class, caucasian upbringing, I didn’t really understand what people of color faced until I was in college. Many incidents in my life started to make sense when I finally understood that because my skin is brown people look and think about me differently. Like many black children my mother had to give me the talk about police and authority when I was 12 years old. In fact, she is often the person who has to remind me about subtle racism. I tend to forget about it in my everyday life as I endeavour to treat everyone with kindness and respect. There are jobs, opportunities, and other chances that I don’t even know that I’ve missed out or simply been denied due to my skin tone. There are also wonderful and amazing things that I’ve gotten to do and experience as a person of color. Not only do I get to be the next generation in a lineage that survived a cruel institution but I can continue to blaze a trail in media for others and I can continue to create as I do and draw attention to voices, people, situations, and experiences that are novel to certain audiences.

I spent plenty of time growing up hating my skin, the way I looked, and the way I was. I desperately wanted to be like the young men I saw at church: 6′ 2″ with lovely white skin, blonde hair, and abs. I thought that I could look like the guys on Abercrombie and Fitch bags or the mannequins at Hollister. At some level I also just wanted to fit in with the men I saw around me. I wanted to be them in the worst way. I would take years before I could look in the mirror and confidently say, “Hey good looking.”

The true power of racism takes place in the hearts and minds of people deemed “other.” Racism teaches black children that they are not human, they are not worth anything, and that their very existence is a crime against respectable people. In some ways, racist people don’t need the fire hoses and dogs that my Father fought against in the 1960s. They have infected the black population of this country with a disease far more potent than any punishment that they could inflict. When you think about racism from this perspective, many of the seemingly negative behaviors of the ghetto and projects begin to make sense. How can we expect a people–a nation–to raise itself up when the message surrounding those people is constantly: “You’re nothing, no one, and shouldn’t have been born.”

However, there is reason to hope. With writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and many others who are exposing racism for who and what it is, future generations may benefit from the exposure of this disease. The sooner we can have respect for all the people on the earth, the sooner we can move forward into that great tomorrow of promise.