21-Day Racial Equity Challenge

 Day 1: Personal Racial Identity

• When did you first become aware of your racial identity?
• What messages did you learn about race from your school and family? Did they align with what you’ve seen in your life?
• When has how others perceived your racial identity affected how they treat you?

 

I probably never thought about my racial identity until college. Until then, I considered myself “normative,” “American,” “Mid-Western” etc.

 

It was always understood in my family to never use the N-word. My parents enjoyed entertaining college students from different backgrounds and rented a room to a female student who was Black. I never thought anything of it. My brother had Black friends, but I did not. Looking back, I have tried to “justify” this by confirming that there were no Black girls in my grade in elementary school, even though my school was the most diverse with the possible exception of the University lab school. I checked my senior class, and there were no Black girls among a class of 220. Obviously, the majority were White. There were boys my age who were Black, and I considered them cool, nice, athletic and normal. I don’t remember witnessing any overt racism, though I likely would not have recognized it (?).

 

My parents have recounted the racism they encountered when they moved to our small town, including a real estate agent who tried to steer them away from certain neighborhoods, and when they did pick a house, told them they would want to move “up” at some point (they never did). They wanted us to stay in the school with the lowest socio-economic students even when we could have gone to another elementary because they liked the teachers.

 

I don’t  think anyone ever treated me differently because of my race, but I wondered on the inside if anyone resented me for being White. I remember seeing a book called “Black Like Me” around my house, and I’ve wondered what it would be like to be Black. I remember movies like “Lillies of the Valley” and “To Sir With Love” and thought Sidney Portier was very handsome, but I didn’t know what the big deal was about.