suddenly remembering probably the first white person i ever saw in the flesh; a girl in kindergarten who sat two seats away from me named Elizabeth. she had long blond hair in a ponytail down to her calves.
since i’d already been exposed to television i wasn’t shocked or anything because i knew white people existed, but i remember the feeling of being somewhat mesmerized by how pale she actually was – like, a paleness that cant accurately be portrayed in media.
i thought she was very strange looking yet very pretty, and outside of that wonderment i wasn’t very much affected otherwise.
this was still in my hometown which was probably 99% black.
the only reason im remembering it now is because i was thinking just before about how i don’t feel the…”weight” of my “blackness” as much in La as i did in Filly, which in turn led me to remembering how, after my family moved from the aforementioned town to the suburbs of a city across the river where the numbers flipped almost completely around, i became very aware of “blackness”, that is, that it existed – that i was almost a thing, or a phenomenon more than a person.
i couldnt have articulated then like i might now, the radical shift in my entire psyche upon the realization that most of the citizens of the society in which i had theretofore been living was populated by people who seemed to have a ‘cozier’ and elevated status in this society, the realization of living this life of clear and present otherness; and in such a way that for many years i literally thought (not slang ironic “literally”, but my actual thoughts) that i was cursed, and not just me, my family and every brown skinned person that existed.
i don’t think that way anymore, though the grounds for my thinking is still quite alive