Mr. Robert Gordon is at it again, provoking the peripherals of my memories.

Question:

How/When did you become race conscious?

1. At home/parents/upbringing
   2. School
   3. Religious/Cultural teaching
   4. News/Print Media
   5. Music/Television
   6. Literature
   7. Racial epithet
   8. Workplace Discrimination
   9. Encounter with law enforcement
   10. Social Circle (dating, partying)
   11. Social Norms
   12. Other

My Response: 

Truthfully, as I think it over, perhaps I was always conscious of race. Indeed not at birth, but somewhere not long after. I spent the majority of my childhood, from 0 to 14, in and out of the hospital, due to a congenital heart defect. In the children’s hospital during that era, white children did not share rooms with black children.

After every surgery and medical procedure, I was sent to Big Momma’s house in Mulberry Grove, IL, to heal. There were no white folks near our land or attending our church, but they ran the farmers market and all the stores uptown; and they weren’t always pleasant.

My mom and dad divorced when I was four, and by the time I was seven, my father had remarried, and my stepmother, two brothers, and sister were White. We began attending an all-white church, my father hardly participated, and my (biological) sister and I were the only black faces; needless to say, the white folks there were not always kind. Two years later, at nine, I was removed from a predominantly black public school to a predominantly white private Christian school. The brochure read 93% Caucasian, 5% Black, and 3% Others. I remember asking my Mother what others mean.

My only opportunity for television or the movies was at home in St. Louis with my Mother. At that time, it was the height of Blaxploitation. And on those summer weekends when my Mother took us to the drive-in-theater, I dreamed of being Cleopatra Jones, Christy Love, and Foxy Brown. My Mother instilled in us Black Power and Black Beauty and Black-Love. We subscribed to every Black Magazine, from Ebony and Essence to Jet and Jive.

My Mother once said, we live in a racist world, and this world would have you think only fair skin and white skin is beautiful, and I want you to know your Brown skin is just as beautiful. Christmas of 1975, I received from my dad and stepmom a 4-foot-tall, life-sized white baby doll with dark brown hair. My Mother took that doll and spray-painted her Brown from head to toe. She also outlined her eyebrows, eyelashes and pupils black. She mixed brown and red and recreated her lips. When momma was done, it appeared as if the doll was purchased that way. One would never know the difference.

The next time we visited Daddy, I had to carry my 4-foot brown doll with me.

From the white nuns who ran the children’s hospital, to being married into a white family with an all-white church congregation and being switched from a predominantly black public school to a predominately white private Christian school at nine, I will say, I became race-conscious as a small child. As I think things through, I realize the children never called me names or made racial slurs. It was always White Christian Adults.

Your questions seem to always provoke the writer in me.

Thank U Mr. Gordon

Sincerely,

SistaSistaSister