I lived across the street from my middle school. In the mornings, I would meet my friends at the street corner, and we would talk about everything from homework,
to hobbies,
to family.
In this little group of friends, I felt like I
belonged.
There was always a swarm of students entering the school. Something about being surrounded by peers made me feel less
alone.
In math class, I realized that people were expecting me to be good at math. They counted on me to do the group projects for them and to get 100s on the tests without even studying. Behind me stood two caricatures of brown parents who wouldn’t expect any less. Who were these brown parents who forced their children to get 100s on math tests?
They weren’t mine.
In science class, I thought biology was facts. Facts and numbers and diagrams could not make me feel
invisible.
Pictures are how people are
seen.
We were studying DNA and working on a project where you and your lab partner theoretically had a child. I was working on the genotype, and my partner was working on phenotype. When I asked the
blond-haired,
blue-eyed
boy to show me the pictures he printed, he showed me five pictures of
white-skinned,
blonde-haired,
blue-eyed
children.
Perhaps I should have changed my hypothesis to “humans can now reproduce asexually and only inherit traits from one parent.” When I saw those white children, I felt
erased.
Could nobody see me?
Did they think I was white, too?
Before I could think too long, I was whisked away to my next class, English. From a young age, I loved stories. I loved Langston Hughes and Jaqueline Woodson’s poetry. I loved Jason Reynold’s stories. However, their stories only got taught in February. I was taught that there is only Black struggle. In all the other months of the year, I learned about white people.
There is white struggle and white joy and white despair and white grief and white triumph and white
Supremacy.
I never learned where brown people fit into this picture. It wasn’t until high school when I realized brown stories can be taught in schools, too, but only as an example of “the other side.”
The other side is
Poor.
Dirty.
Hungry.
Their women are
Vulnerable.
Oppressed.
Abused.
Their men are
Dangerous.
Creepy.
Weird.
Their traditions are
Hellish.
Backward.
Savage.
In English class, I learned that stories about beautiful brown girls who are strong, who are heroes, who have no place in an American classroom. Stories about Rani Lakshmi Bai, an Indian queen who valiantly protected her town against British colonizers, are bedtime stories.
They have no place in the classroom.
My stories have no place in the classroom.
I have no place in the classroom.
True literature is The Giver and The Outsiders and Holes because boys get to go on adventures and be heroes.
In history class, I learned about war. The Civil War, the Revolutionary War and the World Wars. I learned about the “pros and cons” of slavery. I learned to name the seven Chinese dynasties. I learned that heroes in history were men like Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus. I learned about the British empire, but never learned about the famine where Churchill stole food from millions resulting in the death of 2.1 to three million Indians. I learned about the 14th amendment and the 19th amendment but never learned that women of color only gained the right to vote in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. I learned about Christopher Columbus and the “transfer of disease,” but had no idea I was living on stolen land.
At the end of the day, I walked home from school wishing I was white. Wishing that, just for a second, someone would
Blink
and be able to see me. I wished that my teachers would have to learn about people who looked like me because it is their job to teach me. I wish that my peers had education on people who looked like me because then they would know how to navigate stereotypes about me. I wished I was white so I could be just another member of the group project, so I didn’t have to print new pictures of dark-haired, dark-eyed, brown children, so I am allowed to experience joy and grief and triumph in books, so I can look down at a history book and see someone who looks
just
like
me.
On Nov. 2, Glenn Youngkin became the governor of Virginia, running on the platform that race should not be taught in schools. During his campaign, Youngkin aired an ad saying that Toni Morrison’s Beloved made people uncomfortable and should be banned from the curriculum. Youngkin’s platform implied that education centered around the histories and stories of people of color are dangerous. I would rather not be associated with danger, so instead, for a large portion of my life, I associated my identity with shame. If children who look like me continue to be
Erased.
Invisible.
Silenced.
They too will walk home from school wishing they were white.
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