Childhood Innocence
By Sierra Ware
As a child in Anaheim California, I lived in a neighborhood with several different races. Race of my friends was the least of my childhood thoughts.
I remember when a Spanish-speaking family moved into the house next door and a few days later came over to introduce themselves. I had seen over the past few days that they had a girl about my age, which meant someone new to play with. The neighbors came over one evening and introduced themselves. I remember asking the little girl what her name was and she said, “¿como?” I knew her language was different, but I don’t think it occurred to me that we weren’t understanding one another. The following day I went outside on the porch and starting yelling for “Como” to come outside and play. The next thing I know my mother is coming outside asking what I was doing. I remember telling her I was calling for “Como” to come out and play with me. Needless to say, I learned that the little girl next door name was most definitely not “¿como?” but Lupita. Across the street was a Mexican family, with a daughter about two years older than me, named Katie. I would always go over to Katie’s house and play Barbies, spend the night, or just have dinner with her family. Down the street a little way were two black brothers who were a little older than me, but they were always outside playing basketball or some game and always pushed me in my little buggy.
Being around all these different cultures, races, and backgrounds, I never understood the differences between us all. We always played together, whether it was rollerblading around the block, playing four-square, making up dances to Britney Spears, or playing games, we always seemed to have a good time enjoying one another’s company. I still have pictures hanging in my room, here in Texas, of Katie and Lupita. The last few times my family has gone back to California to visit we have made a stop to see Katie and her family.
Growing up in the childhood “perfect world” of everyone getting along and playing together, it doesn’t make sense to me how race affected our daily lives. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:
* Why is it that when we approach racism it’s generally in a negative light?
* Why is race the first word to come out in conversation’s or disagreements between people?
* Why is race still a growing issue when multiracial individuals and families are increasing?
According to Pew Research the percentage of adults with multicultural racial backgrounds was about 6.9% based off of multiracial grandparents, parents or choose one or more races to describe themselves. Learning this statistic it made sense to me because of my experiences with my friendship because of all of the different races getting along.
My friends are of all races and ethnicities and today we still “play and get along.” Racism is hard for me to understand because of all the factors that play into this subject and different ways of looking at it. I’m not oblivious to race, or the factors and statistical truths of white privilege, or the racial slurs, but that didn’t affect the way I lived out my daily life. I remember our family car broke down in an unsafe area in downtown Los Angeles and a man of a different race came up to the car window and made a gun with his hand and acted like he was going to shoot me. My family also lived in LA when the Rodney King riots were going on and now I’m understanding the seriousness of racism. I did see and live around racism, but that didn’t affect my childhood friends and neighbors or the way I treated anyone. Sometimes my family felt like we were the minority in the years that we lived in Anaheim and statistics show that between 1990 and 2000 this became more prevalent, but it never changed the way I spoke or viewed anyone even with the racism we faced. The U.S Census and the Orange County Community Organize for Responsible Development (OCCORD) shows the Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Anaheim while I was growing up.
Today, my life is completely different. Living in Abilene continues to allow me to live in a bubble where race seems to be at a level of understanding between all. I’m surrounded by different races and backgrounds, but that hasn’t effected or hindered the relationships I hold. However, seeing the negativity with race in the national media, especially this past year, really exhausts the matters that shouldn’t be “big stories” but racial differences causes them to escalate to the national level. The negativity that comes out of the media and racial comments will continue to linger in the generations to come if we can’t find a way to put racial differences to rest. How can we stop an ever growing downhill spiral effect if we continue to put negativity on different colors of skin? I don’t like how we hammer in a nail that isn’t necessarily there anymore by continually repeating history and dwelling on the past. Yes, it’s been a huge and awful time in our history since about 1619, and we need to learn about it, but we can’t fix the past, we can just prevent it from continuing to hurt others. White privilege doesn’t sit well with me and by that I mean whites shouldn’t advance over others just because of their color of skin. I have friends within all the racial groups and it isn’t right to see my friends not advance because of their color. By being aware of the flaws we can start putting an end to racism for the generations to come. Race always being the first word out of one’s mouth doesn’t help stop the spiral. Being quick to react, misunderstanding, misinterpreting each other, or reading into an issue shouldn’t be something we do. We shouldn’t let the younger generations see the negativity of being a different color. Most of us grew up with friends of all colors and it didn’t occur to us until we were told there was a difference.
Race is hard. It can’t be solved in a day, week, or even a year. It will take generations of love, care, and teaching to take away the negativity when race is mentioned. Keeping the childhood mindset is the key, finding the key is the downfall. I wish we all could live in a world like I saw growing up with Katie and Lupita.
