Finding myself through my surroundings
It was just another day under the sun, attending the six 45-minute classes I’d been taking for half the year at that point. Kennedy High School was nearing lunchtime as fourth period was almost up. As I awaited the best time of the day, I started talking to a friend I’d recently made after our assigned seats had been shuffled in class. After talking about how much I liked the song he recommended to me the previous day, “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin, this new friend, who was white, said to me: “You’re my favorite Black person.”
Kennedy High School is located in the smack center of La Palma, a small, 2-square-mile city in Orange County populated by a majority of elderly and wealthier families, not well off per say, but comfortable. My friends/surroundings were diverse in ethnicity, for the most part. With a lot of the students being mostly Asian and White, followed by Hispanic/Latino, there was a small population of Black students in my class, let alone at school.
Due to growing up in this surrounding, a lot of things were normalized around me that I’ve come to learn over time shouldn’t have been. When that old friend told me I was their favorite Black person, I, being an uneducated teenager, took that as a compliment, thinking that I was someone’s favorite. Anything felt like an honor or a kind gesture. It didn’t take long after to realize the overall context of the “compliment.”
This was far from the only racially charged action I experienced throughout high school. From the casual class gaze shifting whenever slavery came up in our teachings, to the n-word being thrown out either in a casual tone in conversation or as an easy insult to throw into a losing argument. Not to mention the constant fascination with whatever hairstyle I wanted to sport at that time ranging from inappropriate questions/comments to random touching without any consent. This was not limited to students. Even teachers had their input.
Again, most of it over time began to feel normal, or at least expected. Though as I grew older, I began to find a lot of other Black people online sharing their similar experiences through jokes or tweet thread conversations that, for one, helped me come to see just how normalized these things are, but also that just because they’re normalized doesn’t mean it’s right. It was disguised racism often covered up with a “joke.”
After I graduated high school I attended Long Beach City College in Long Beach, California — a minute drive from my house, yet a completely different environment than what I’ve grown to know. College has more social standards and norms held up by the students who attend. A lot of the problems I had before were absent in the class setting and I quickly realized that after my first few days of attending.
I was more surprised with my surrounding demographic. Truly feeling like a mixing pot of different ethnicities and people of different backgrounds, this was the first time in my education I didn’t feel like a black sheep in the classroom.
Even outside of the classroom, hanging out with classmates always felt so comfortable. The conversation never resorted to an uncomfortable comment about race, I wasn’t asked to have my hair touched after someone compliments it and there weren’t casual N words being thrown in conversation from people who aren’t Black. I was able to make genuine healthy friendships with people who were either similar to me through appearance, experiences or interests.
There was this sense of unity and kinship between the Black community that I never really got to feel before besides through family. There was this one experience that’ll always stick out to me. I was invited to a birthday party from a photographer friend I had made through mutuals of my classmates. Not knowing too many people and it being deep in Long Beach, I was a little hesitant on going, but ultimately went anyway. Upon arriving I was surprised at the sight. There were only people of color who were also around my age. I quickly felt comfortable as everyone was singing and dancing to the music being played. I was warmly welcomed by everyone attending and no one felt out of reach to talk to. We even played a few different games like charades and other group games with the entire party. After leaving that night I had realized I had never really enjoyed a party with people like that before — not bound to only the people I lived near or the school I attended, but a party full of people who were like me.
This sense of kinship grew with me as I went through my early years of college. A big part of it was due to my new environment and friends I had made, but while that was happening, there was also an increase in reports of police killing Black people being reported in the media. Growing up as a Black male in America I was taught from a young age that police interactions and other situations could have a different outcome with me compared to my non-Black friends. So in a sense, seeing/hearing it was happening in itself wasn’t as much of a surprise to me. But there was an increasing amount of people I would see online being fed up with these instances, and it was more than just a certain population of people. As Black Lives Matter grew as an organization there began to be more non-Black allies helping protest, start conversation and help defend/ demand justice for these unlawful killings along with other racial injustices.
These emotions were really felt when I attended last year’s Black Lives Matter protest in Long Beach. Surrounded by many who shared the same resolve of justice, we marched down streets taking up most of both lanes chanting with a mob of people almost a quarter mile long. People who were just driving would honk in support while others even parked their car, got out and joined. I once again noticed I was surrounded by all these people and felt nothing but comfortability, a feeling foriegn to me only years before due to my experiences in my early schooling.
It’s now 2021, I’ve transferred to California State University, Northridge with my associates degree in journalism and am still currently attending school from my room in Orange County. There was a recent protest that happened about 20 minutes away from me at Huntington Beach that I saw articles about on my timeline. The protest was a “white lives matter” protest in reaction to the Black Lives Matter ones occurring last year, with the protest ultimately trying to demean the purpose of what BLM represents. It was filled with many white supremacists and racists. While reading articles I noticed a particular name being quoted in the story. It was that same classmate from my fourth period high school class commenting on how a Black life shouldn’t matter more than his.
