Last year, this time, I wrote how the world is not what it used to be. While of course, I am yet, thank the Lord, another year older, I am, again, another year wiser.
This year I have come to see things a little differently. With this additional year of knowledge, I have come to learn that while the state of affairs in our society today has changed, the change seems to be moving backward.
When I was a young child growing up, I remember having to watch the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech every year on his birthday. I remember having to look at the movie “Roots” every year it came on television.
As I watched these programs, I marveled at the advancements we made. I was glad that racism did not exist for me the way it did for my great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents when they were kids.
Last year I wrote about my biggest problems growing up were listening to my parents argue and skipping school. This month I didn’t know what to write. What I mean by that statement is that with the current problems in the news, I felt wrong attempting to write about something happy or silly. I felt as though I was ignoring the obvious by doing so.
So, this month, I decided to share another portion of my life through a small story. What’s the difference between this story and all the other stories I share? Well, I’ll let you figure that out.
As I mentioned before, I grew up in the projects of Brooklyn, New York. Although I grew up in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, the junior high school I attended was not in my neighborhood. It was in an essentially Caucasian neighborhood.
One day, coming home from this school, my brother, his friends and I were chased to the train station with chains and baseball bats. The kids chasing us were Caucasian, and they were shouting for us “N’s” to “go back where we came from.”
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