I grew up in a small town in Southeast Texas, truly a world of it's own. I loved my childhood. My whole family lived there, and I saw them often. My best friends to this day I met in elementary school. I performed under the Friday night lights each week and hung out with my friends after football games. It was fun.
I would imagine growing up in my small town was not as fun for others. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I was sitting in the stands on a Friday night with my dad and my brother at one of my first football games cheering on the high school football team. Friday nights are absolutely electric in our small town. This particular night that electricity was more tense than exciting. That night was the first time a black student had ever played on our school's football team. We were surrounded by middle aged white men booing and yelling for him to get off the field. As a young child, I knew their actions were wrong. I made angry and disgusted faces at them, but what else could I do? My dad told me they were wrong and no one should ever act that way, and he told me to ignore them. I think we might have even moved away from them. My dad was protecting us. The same people who would yell such things would surely harm my dad or us for calling them out, and no one for miles would ever kick them out of the game for their actions. What should I have done differently? I don't know. On the first day of a computer course my senior year of high school, I sat next to a sophomore who introduced himself and proudly told me that in two years, he would be the first African American student to go all the way through the school system in our district. I stared at him blankly as I both tried to digest this new information and this 15 year old boy who spoke so freely about what it was like to be black at our school. He graduated in 2003. 2003. It took that long for ONE black student to make it from Kindergarten to 12th grade. I'm sure there were others that tried. I wish I had taken information from my conversations with him and done something with it. What? I don't know. When Will was a baby, we were visiting a Texas beach we've been vacationing at since I was a little girl. It's a small, family-oriented beach, but like any Texas beach, rules and decorum tend to be lost on some. As Will played in the water, I happened to turn in enough time to see a truck full of white men pull in front of a black man riding a horse and spin out their wheels so sand would fly in the black man's face. They were laughing. I was stunned. I didn't do anything because I was standing there with my baby. Could I have called the police? Maybe, but what crime would they assign to this? What could I have done while also protecting my son? Same predicament as my dad all those years ago, protecting my child. I don't know. My mom is hispanic, but she does not speak Spanish. I remember finding out my grandparents spoke fluently and asking my mom why she did not. Why did my grandparents never speak Spanish in front of us? My grandparents faced so much discrimination for simply being hispanic that they refused to let my mom and her brothers and sisters learn the language. They weren't embarrassed but the thought was my mom and her siblings could not be hurt by what they did not know. They could essentially fit in with white people better if they did not speak Spanish. My mom always made sure we knew where we came from. She often spoke of justice and kindness. She taught me that people are afraid of difference and scared of what they don't understand. I'm grateful for her lessons. My worldview has expanded since moving to a large city. It has certainly been broadened by having a child with a disability. I've met and become friends with so many people who aren't like me, and I've joined communities of people I might never have known without Will. I've also come to understand that the loudest voices in advocacy are the ones who have no direct stake in the outcome. It's time to take all these lessons learned and turn them into action. I want to stop saying "I don't know" and better understand what I need to do. I don't want to remain silent because I'm afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing or thinking that my voice doesn't matter in all of this. I'm starting here with my stories, stories that show that the color of my skin has allowed me to move through the world with ease. Stories that show systemic racism exists, sometimes subtle and sometimes not, but it's there. I realize I was not personally harmed in any of these stories, but I'm hoping as a white person it's important to say out loud that these things are happening. I know there is injustice in this world. I know the black community has been hurting for a long time and fighting this battle alone. I know there is work to be done. So, I'm listening. I'm researching. I'm ready to learn how to be a unifying voice. I'm ready to work.
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Charming, quirky and incredibly loving. Will loves his friends, swimming, the iPad, the Avett Brothers, observing the world upside down, climbing, jumping and being chased.
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October 2017
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