My college years have been one of, if not, the most important time of my life. Not purely because of the most obvious reasons, such as, expanding my knowledge or creating valuable friendships, but also because it gave me the chance to create my own world views.
I value history. I remembered sitting in my high school's history class listening to my Honors History teacher recap the American history. I fell in love with it. However, I also remember cringing when he recounted what our forefathers endured when they became slaves. The graphic pictures of a black man hanging on a noose from a tree was burned in my mind. So was the crouching image of a slave bent over in agony. It was an image that couldn't be shaken. But, strangely, in this setting, I felt embarrassed. Not angry. I would later wonder about my feelings. Why wasn't I filled with hatred for the people who did this? Why was I embarrassed because it happened to my people?
The embarrassment stemmed from the audience. Surely, if I were in a classroom filled with blacks, this history class would have been a riveting experience, but the class was diverse. There were blacks, whites, mexicans and bi-racials as far as I could see. We really didn't share a common ground. I was at the bottom, and I hated it. In comparison to there history books, I didn't come from long lines of Kings and Queens; the only thing I was aware of was the fact that I came from people who were viewed by the Europeans as "savages" who needed to be tamed. For a while, I hated that I was black. Black had become, for forty-five minutes, an ugly leering thing, that separated me from the others.
Living in the Caribbean had sheltered me from words like racism, segregation, oppression. The only thing that I knew was not to go to certain beaches because they were primarily for tourists, and tourists were equivalent to whites, who were rich and came for a vacation. Now, here I was sitting in that hard seat, watching those hard pictures, facing a hard reality. Or, what I coin a "rude awakening". When the bell finally rang, I wasted no time in escaping. I knew I would have to face that embarrassment for a few more weeks, but the minute I walked out the door it would linger only for a moment, then escape like fragrance in the wind. I endured it, but an unanswered question still remains up to this day: What is it about the color black that is so uncomfortable?
