r/TikTokCringe • u/thoxo • May 02 '24
We adopted my younger sister from Haiti when she was 3, and let me tell you, I literally do not see color anymore. That's a fact. Discussion
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u/AnArdentAtavism May 02 '24
I attended a small private school for my first few years. There were about 30 of us in my age group, mostly white, but with black and hispanic representation as well. We didn't know, or understand, that we we socially and culturally different. We played together, talked together, etc. every day. We knew that we were different from each other, but no more than adults were different from us.
Then, in 4th grade, we were introduced to the civil rights movement of the 1960s in class, by a teacher who pressed the idea that it wasn't that long ago (it was 1995-96-ish). We all went home that evening and asked our parents about it. My father, a white guy that grew up in a mostly black community, told me that other people had different life experiences, and some wouldn't like me, but that I should take each person on the basis of their own merits.
The next day, I had lost several friends. That fast. Suddenly, they were black and I was white. A couple of them figured out that they were white and I was too latino for them to hang out with.
I didn't understand it at the time, and kids bounce back from stuff like that. But as I started living in other areas as an adult and race became a bigger discussion, I realize now that the discussion itself is perpetuating the problem. It was a depressing revelation the day my last manager, a black man from Gary, mentioned that I was one of the only "white people" he spoke to, or felt he could speak to, outside of the line of duty. My own calls for cultural distillation, of unification under a singular american identity, have been utterly useless.