I wanted to make this a podcast, but when I started talking, I realized it was too much to fit in one episode (and as I started writing, I realized it was too much to fit into one post). With all that is going on, it was hard to order the memories and speak calmly—I've always found that writing about things that make me emotional is the only effective way of expressing myself. Upfront I'm asking for three things: 1) forgiveness for not recording this, 2) forgiveness for disrupting the podcast schedule and posting this as a series over the course of this week, and 3) that you will read the entire series.
I'm going to start this series by recounting a few personal memories involving race and Christianity.
The first time I was made aware of race was actually at a church. My parents had placed me in a preschool that was run by the United Methodist Church as soon as my mother went back to work. So from the time I was about 6 months old until I went to kindergarten, I went to this preschool at the Methodist Church in my home town. Generally speaking, I have fond memories (which start at about the age of 3) from this preschool and of the kids I met there, but this is where I was first told I was black. Before I tell you how that unfolded, I need to point out a few things:
Now, for what happened. I was about four years old and one of the (white) girls from my class approached me and out of the blue said, "I'm white and you're black." I thought she was referencing literal colors. So I did what any good friend would: I took her to the Crayola box, pulled out a black crayon, a white crayon, a peach crayon, and a tumbleweed crayon, and then showed her which colors did and did not match our skin tones. I was deeply concerned, because you have to know your colors to enter kindergarten and clearly she did not know her colors. I don't know if my teacher watched this interaction and then told my parents, or if I told them myself (the little girl was my dad's coworker's daughter), but somehow these events were relayed to my parents who began "the talk" in which they explained to me that I am what society calls "a black person."
To this day, I don't know why she felt the need to inform me that I was black. It seems that it meant something to her and I can only imagine that's because of the context in which she picked up the concept.
Once I started elementary school (at the public school), some friends of the family convinced my parents that the answer to after school care was an after school program at the Catholic Church. They each had a daughter who attended the program and I knew those 2 girls well because they took piano lessons from my grandmother. Since our families were close (to the point of us claiming to be related most of my childhood), my parents enrolled me as well. We were the only black people in the program.
Since the 2 girls I knew were 2 years older than me, we were supposed to be in separate classes. I'm not sure what prompted the beginning of this practice, but every day, they would casually sneak me out of the line going to my class and into the line going to their class. The teachers had to know—if not there are bigger questions that need to be raised—but they never sent me back to my age group. I made friends with a few of the white girls from their class and the guys let me play video games with them (but only if I played as Peach 😒).
One day, neither of them were there. I was 6, and I was scared to sneak myself out of line to go to the big kid class. Besides, what if the big kids were only nice to me because there were two other big kids "protecting" me? So I stayed in my line, and for the first time, I went to my class with the other 6 year olds. We were sitting at a very long table and one of the girls in the class was making her way around the table. When she got to me, she stopped, looked me in my face and called me a n*****. I'm not proud of what happened next, but I'm going to tell you because it's what happened.
By that age, I understood what the word meant (my first time hearing it had been 2 years prior, fortunately not at a Church), so I punched a girl who was mentally disabled. I didn't know what mentally disabled was, and truth be told, she probably didn't fully understand what the n-word was. The adult in the room saw the whole thing and recounted the story to the director. There was no "he said, she said" about it. The girl didn't deny calling me the n-word; I didn't deny punching her. When our parents showed up, my dad and her dad almost got into a fight. Her dad was, understandably, concerned that his daughter had been punched. My dad was, understandably, concerned as to why a 6 year old mentally disabled girl not only knew the n-word but also knew enough to know who to direct it toward. Her dad called for me to be kicked out of the program. My dad argued that if they kicked me out, they should also discipline the girl who called me the n-word. As is so common with people today, the director didn't want to "offend" anyone. She didn't want my parents to get mad that she wasn't disciplining and condemning racism, but she didn't want to upset the white man who's disabled daughter had been punched.
So it came down to the moment when adults expect you to be remorseful and apologize. Since she was mentally disabled, they didn't expect her to understand what she had done was wrong, but they expected me to acknowledge my wrong in punching her and apologize. "Shiree, what do you have to say about this?" Clear as day, I can hear myself say, "I bet she won't call anybody else a n*****." I had no remorse. I didn't feel bad about punching her until I met a (white) boy with cerebral palsy and saw kids picking on him. It took me understanding what it actually meant to be disabled to realize that I hadn't understood that she was mentally disabled in that moment, and just like I didn't understand her condition, she was just saying something she'd been taught.