Dark-Skinned People cont..                   

            

 I wonder what I should do today.

 

 Joyful screams and laughter caught my attention as I noticed a particular group of children laughing as a “tagger” chased them around.

 

 Joyful visions of running up and down the slide and dodging the tagger decided what I planned on doing. I approached one of the players with a happy skip in my step. This particular player was a pretty brunette girl with captivating hazel eyes that held my attention. I asked this girl if I could join and even said please as I remembered my grandmother’s teachings about being very polite especially to girls.

 

 “Can I please play tag with you guys?” I squeaked in my quiet and high-pitched speech.

 

As I expected the normal yes or sure, I was stunned by her response. She glared at me like I was an animal and said, “I don’t play with dark skinned people.”

 

Those were he words that changed my thoughts on society forever. That one sentence turned me into a stone statue, as I stood there dumbfounded. The leaves turned grey and my vision blurred as tears brimmed my eyes. I never looked at myself differently from the rest before, even though I was the only dark skinned child on the playground. I suddenly became an ant in a bees’ nest, a motorcycle in a parking lot for cars, a mouse in a pit of snakes.

 An outcast.

 Why does skin tone matter?

  Emotion became an unintelligible knot of thought and feeling. I couldn’t understand why I suddenly wanted to cry and yell at the same time.  I couldn’t understand what this feeling of being different was; I didn’t understand what this burning feeling inside was.

 I just didn’t understand.

  At such a young age I discovered what racism was and what being excluded felt like. I discovered how it felt to be treated as “less than.”

  I was quiet through lunch, I didn’t raise my hand, I stared out the window on the way home, and as I got in through the red door of my grey house. I cried. I cried because of frustration I cried out of confusion. I cried away some of the pain.

                       

I spoke to my Nana about what this meant and why this was happening and I could sense her trying not to cry in front of me. She explained that some people think that you don’t belong because of your skin and that it makes you different. She explained that they are ignorant and that I should know that I have done nothing wrong. This conversation pulled out some of the tangled wires of my confusion and helped make a little sense of my thoughts.

 Of course things went back to normal and I became a happy child. I understood that some people are mean and rude to others and it’s not always my fault for this.

 I will never forget this day and I will always live with the confusion of why race matters. But this experience drives me. This confusion and memory drives me to help others. I have learned a lot from that little girl on the playground, I learned that people do wrong and I feel it is my duty to be the one to do the right that helps people move along more confidently than before. So I no longer hate the girl on the playground for her mistake. I realize that she helped me become the person who wants to help others and for that I am, and always will be, grateful.

 

So why does skin tone matter? Why does what you look like make you worth less?

                       

It doesn’t.

 

 

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