I was in the second semester of my 9th grade year at Montera Junior High School in Oakland, Calif. It was January, 1977. I lived in the hills of Montclair, a small village on the outskirts of Oakland proper, and most of my neighbors were white or Asian, but I had multi-national friends, especially at school.
We had lived in Oakland for about 10 years, but previous to that, in our home in what is now Silicone Valley, Cupertino, Calif., my best friend was Asian. She lived across the street from me and every day after school we would go to her house and watch Batman episodes on her color TV. It was the first in our neighborhood. It never occurred to me that I should care—or notice even—that she and her family looked different from mine.
So when, in late January of 1977, the miniseries “Roots,” aired with a star-studded cast and a raw look at early America, I was shocked to encounter anger from those who were my friends.
Systems and Symbols
I remember one day in the middle of the series heading to the buses in their chain-linked enclosure at the back of the school. The blue and white city buses, dubbed “school trippers” for their assignment on school days to ferry students to and from school (there were no iconic yellow school buses for us), waited expectantly for their load of students. But something was different this day. Suddenly, there was a line up of black students around the buses yelling at any white students they saw coming toward them.
I remember feeling frightened and confused. I was 15 years old, had lived in a diverse city most of my life, and had counted many of those yelling at me as friends. Hadn’t I spent many hours at the home of my friend Tina? Wasn’t Don one of my best friends? Didn’t I work side-by-side in class with so many more?
In 1977, black students made up approximately 18% of the 9th grade class. Other people of color—Asians, Indians, Latinos—comprised another 14% (these are not scientific, verified statistics, just a quick count from my yearbook). As I look at those pages, the diversity of skin tones makes me smile. These were my people.
But that day in the bus compound, I felt something different. I didn’t know how to process it then, as a 15-year-old, but I know now what I didn’t know then. And that was this: I didn’t know a thing about how my friends were affected by real life.
We didn’t talk about any times outside of school when they were the targets of hate or discrimination. We didn’t talk about their parents and the difficult things they encountered. We should have talked about it. Maybe then I would have understood, or at least had a glimpse into, what they were feeling and seen that it wasn’t about me specifically. I was just a symbol.
Speaking Up
One day, several years later when I was in college, I was working in a small hardware store in Oakland and witnessed something I will never forget. I was training a new gal on the cash register. She was a friend a couple of years younger than me, and she was Korean. An older white man approached the counter to check out, and I noticed that he had an angry look on his face. As the new young woman began to ring up his order with a pleasant smile on her face, he sneered and said something like, “This monkey doesn’t belong here.”
A fist clenched in the middle of my stomach. Heat diffused my face. I couldn’t believe I was hearing these words. Anger rose in me. I hurriedly finished his transaction and then told him to leave. There was no, “Thanks for coming, have a nice day, hope to see you again.” Frankly, I hoped never to see him again.
My friend and I didn’t talk about the encounter that day. She was a sweet, innocent girl and I wondered if she had even caught what he said. I hoped not, but I’m guessing maybe she did and was just trying to ignore it. I should have asked her how she was feeling. It would have been good to dive into her past experiences. Just ignoring it wasn’t going to help. She needed to know I was on her side.
Space For Other Voices
Over the years, I haven’t personally witnessed very many instances of racism like that, but I have changed my mindset about something. I used to be firmly in the “colorblind” camp. Why does color matter? Can’t we all just get along and see each other as people?
Now, I celebrate the diversity around me. Those from other cultures have so much to contribute. Yes, America used to be a melting pot, with all the immigrants—many of which were my own family who came to the States from Italy to find a better life—trying to just become like everyone else. But now, I see us as a salad bowl. You can see the differences, taste the differences, but love how it all comes together in one beautiful presentation.
In Revelation 7, when John is describing all the people before the throne of the Lamb, he doesn’t just say that all people who believed in Jesus were there, he makes it a point to say “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.” He noticed the different tribes, he heard the different languages and he saw the different people.
And before that, in Acts 2 we see this scene: “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.’”
I’m not colorblind anymore. I see the differences, I celebrate the diversity, and I speak up when I see or hear someone being treated badly. I wish that day in 9th grade that I could have understood how seeing a depiction of slavery made my African-American friends feel. I wish I could have understood that it wasn’t me they were mad at; it was the system. The miniseries came and went, and our school went back to normal in just a few days. At least it did for me. But how much better would it have been if a conversation could have been started to give those students a voice to express how they felt and what they experienced so that I didn’t have to wait so long have the blinders removed from my eyes.
The richness of full color really is a lot more beautiful than shades of grey.
I’m not colorblind anymore. I see the differences, I celebrate the diversity, and I speak up when I see or hear someone being treated badly. Click To Tweet
