African American?

Please God, help me get my thoughts across in this hub as I intend for them to be.

I don't understand racism. I mean I know what it is, and I guess the reason for it is all about misunderstandings and mystery. As a "white" person, I was blessedly unaware of it until I was seventeen years old.

At the age of 17 I went to Massachusetts to attend one semester of college. I had never been out of Texas, so I guess my accent stood out. I took a class at night to fit everything into my schedule. There was a man in that class that just openly couldn't stand me. I was pretty quiet and shy, so I couldn't figure out what I had done. At the end of the semester, I gathered up my courage and asked him.

He didn't hold back, it was like he had been holding back his hateful words as long as he could. He looked at me like he wanted to kill me and said, "You people killed our President!" I don't know what I had been expecting, but it wasn't that. I was shocked.

I said, "I was a baby when that happened!" I didn't understand how he could blame me for it. Then he said, "And it's the way you people treat Negro's." Okay, now I was totally confused. What in the world was he talking about? I mean I had seen Gone With The Wind, I had studied a little bit about it in school. But wasn't that like hundreds of years ago? What did it have to do with me?

He said that when he was in the Army in the 1950's he had been in Houston Texas and at that time, White people walked on one side of the street and Black people on the other. And that black people couldn't drink out of the same water fountains, or eat in certain restaurants. I looked at him in disgust and told him he was crazy. I had never seen or heard of anything like that in my life.

That night I was so upset, that I went home and called my Mother to ask her about it. When she told me that the man was right about the treatment of Black people, I started crying. I didn't know that. I couldn't believe it. Until then, it had seemed like slavery and anything else I had heard about was not real, in another world or something.

I grew up in San Antonio, my Father was retired from the Army. He had died from military related injuries by the time I was seventeen, but I remembered he had friends of many races. We all did. I never felt any tension. I think one reason I don't understand racism is that I am not one. One race. What I'm trying to say is, my bloodline is a mixture of God knows what. I do know that we have English and Irish, Cherokee and Sioux, French and Dutch. I don't know what else, and I don't really care. I have black hair and blue eyes, and the dreaded freckles. With black hair, I hated having pale skin so I spent a lot of time laying in the sun trying to get my skin darker. So now I have sun spots and damaged skin as well.

In my sheltered little world, once again I thought prejudice was a thing of the past. Then I heard about how badly Black kids and even adults sometimes get treated when they get pulled over by cops. Again, I couldn't believe it. Why? In this day and age, how can it even be an issue.

You may notice I keep using the term black. It's because I don't really know how to distinguish it in a better way. The term African American doesn't make sense to me. Who started that? And why? Someone with darker skin could be from anywhere.

I read a hub today by N.E. Wright about the differences in being light black instead of dark black. I would rather be friends or family with someone based on their personality more than anything else. Isn't Denzel Washington a darker shade? Everyone loves him. Watching my favorite characters on certain TV shows I completely forget who is which-ever race, unless someone brings it up.

On Oprah today she was talking with Mark Fuhrman. I think we all know who that is, but in case you don't, he was the cop that testified in O.J. Simpsons trial that he had never used the "N" word. By the way, my theory on what really happened to Ron and Nicole are probably different from 99% of everyone else, and I totally don't believe it was as cut and dried - divided between black and whites as the media presented it to be.

However, being totally honest here, what IS up with the word that no one will ever admit to saying? Frankly, I'm scared to say it, although I do hear black people say it all the time. Why doesn't it apply to everyone and anyone? Why does it seem like everyone is still trying to keep things separated? There have been Miss Black America pageants, BET awards, ALMA Awards, Latino Grammy Awards. Imagine if there was a Miss Caucasian America Awards? Who would really qualify for that? Having Indian blood in me, I don't think I would.

I don't know. It's still all confusing to me. And I think it must be to a lot of us, hence the misunderstanding and the mysteries I spoke about at the beginning of this hub. As you know by now, I watch Oprah a lot. But sometimes even she will say things that reminds us all that there are differences. She brought up some kind of dance one time, and she said that all the Black people would know what she was talking about. I thinks she actually used the word Brothers, but how did that get to mean Black men? I have a brother too.

Oohhh! See? I just don't get it.

I do feel terribly sad that JFK was killed, I think it is horrible that there was ever such an atrocity as slavery, it was wrong how white people treated Indians. But honestly? I don't feel responsible for it.

Drive safely,

KT