I was born in Watts Ca and moved to Nigeria with my parents when I was 2. I returned when I was 7 and we (My dad, my younger brother and myself) settled in Los Angeles. My father enrolled me in a school in Westchester which was predominantly Caucasian. Up till that time I had no concept of race. I was a little confused about the abundance of pale skinned people around me but it wasn't a huge concern. Westport Heights Elementary School quickly changed that. I remember teachers treating me as if I was stupid and I just didn't understand why they treated me this way because i knew i was intelligent and hard-working. The teachers were condescending and the students were awful. On top of being black i was also perceived as a foreigner so that fueled the cruelty of their attacks. As time passed (maybe a year) I realized that being Black was not a good thing and significantly affected how others treated me. I spent many days dreaming of obtaining white paint so I could rid myself of this perceived curse.
Although I thought elementary school was awful in my junior high school years I began to reconsider. The treatment i received in elementary school actually seemed pleasant compared to the daily hell in jhs. This was a total source of confusion for me because elementary school was all white, my junior high school was 40% black but things actually got worse. Basically I think what happened was there were more groups into which I didn't fit. The Blacks thought I was snobby cuz I didn't speak Ebonics (that's not what it was called then) but that was like a foreign language to me and most people didn't understand that. On top of that the white students were very exclusive and i don't remember much of my interactions with asians or mexicans/ hispanics. As a result the first two years of jhs (6th & 7th) were very, very painful. My daily prayer was God please give me a friend. I probably had hundreds of enemies in Jhs. I'm sure i contributed to the problem but it was never intentional. Anyhow 8th grade was a little better but that's cuz i had honors classes and spent all my free time reading my 25 books a week. So I pondered my dilemma less, plus i had the hope of High School to cheer me up.
Then came High School. I was so excited at the chance to go to a new school and leave all my problems and enemies behind. Not so. When i arrived and spent a few weeks I realized that my life had been getting better in junior school cuz each year one third of my enemies would graduate and move to High School. Upon arrival in addition to making new enemies, i was reunited with my old ones. However there is one bright spot in high school- that's where i met my first real friend. (She's the one i sold the almond candy bar) Anyhow after ninth grade I decided something had to change because the level of suffering was too much. I needed to change schools. So I applied to 3 magnet schools and 2 of them rejected me. I went to the one that accepted me although I had no idea where it was or what it would be like and despite the fact that I had already missed the first two weeks of school. (The magnet was on C-Track which started the day after the 4th of July)
So I walk into my new school. And I was stunned. Speechless. I was not even prepared for the sight that greeted my face. I was swallowed by hundreds of Mexicans/ Hispanics. My dad said, "are you sure you want to do this? I don't see any black students." I said they are here, we just can't see them right now. Well Garfield High School has over 5,400 students and I think the total number of black students in any given year was less than 10. In my graduating class of over 800 people there were 2 blacks and I was one of them. There were maybe 50 Asians(i'm not sure which subgroups) and there was one white person briefly but she left after about 2 months. Garfield was so cool. Since it was 99% hispanic it had a really cool subculture. I absolutely loved how friendly and laid back everyone was. I remember in one class somebody walked in with a soda and we all shared it. Although Garfied high school was a little weak on the academic side i was willing to overlook that fact because of the absence of emotional trauma.
The story gets a lot more interesting when I arrived at Stanford and join an Intervarsity bible study, start going to KCPC sophomore year. join the African Students Association and all kinds of wild things. But I'll leave the details of that story for another day. I came to the conclusion that the whole racial thing is a myth that we have all been brainwashed into believing. And it's so hard to break out of because that's all we've ever known and heard. Sometimes I smile to myself when I hear somebody say stuff like i wish i had friends of another color or from a different race. it just shocks me cuz, I've never intentionally tried to make a friend with someone from a different race but my circumstances or the groups i run with make it happen. that's why i love my class at SMC cuz there are so many different folks and i love hearing people's stories. It doesn't really matter what ethnicity or nationality you are but it excites me know that there are people who have had radically different experiences from me.