For as long as I can remember, Sharon has been my “second mom”.  She has always told people when they ask, that she has five children, when only two of those five are blood related.  Sharon was my older brother’s nanny and she babysat my sister and me since the day we were born.  To this day she is a part of our family.  She is also Jamaican.  

When we go out for breakfast together now and someone sees us, there is always a double take as they try and figure out how we must know each other.  When we were babies and she took my sister and me to the park other parents would sometimes look at the three of us confused.  

I have noticed the difference in the way people treat me when I’m with my white friends versus a friend of color ever since I was in kindergarten.  My best friend was half black then and when we would have playdates together and be out with our parents, people were always less polite, and less patient with us.

When I had my first boyfriend, he was black, and I know the way my family treated him was no different from the way they’ve treated my white boyfriends.  However, in public when we would hold hands or kiss, we would always get strange looks.

A few years ago, Sharon’s daughter, Tenisha, got married.  Of course, we were invited to the wedding because we are family. This experience gave me the smallest inkling of what it could feel like all the time when you live in a predominantly white area, or go to a predominantly white school, etc.  The very important difference here though, was that I was being welcomed with open arms by every person I met.  Everyone was saying things like, “Hey, you must be Jade, I’ve heard so much about you!”  Whereas in the reverse situation, that may not be true.

Now, I was raised to accept everyone the same regardless of skin color, religion, sexuality, etc.  I have Puerto Rican family members, I have had friends and boyfriends of all different nationalities.  That does NOT mean I know what it feels like to be a person of color in America.  I will never understand that, because I haven’t lived that.  

I frankly find it incredibly insulting when people try to justify their racism with reasons like, “Oh, she can’t be racist because she has a black friend.”

That fact is: We have racism in America today, and ignoring it gets us nowhere.  Racists can come in any shape or size, of any color, and they live in the biggest of cities, to the smallest of towns.  Just because someone is nice, or doesn’t seem like a racist, or denies they’re racist, or is not blatantly racist, does not mean that they aren’t.