In our suburban ignorance – and cluelessness as to the conservative, white, privileged world we inhabited – we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know any better because our schools and our churches and our friends were white. We didn’t know any better because, given our town’s socioeconomic differences, we believed we already lived in the throes of diversity: after all, there were skaters and preps, athletes and drama kids, choir nerds and band geeks. We didn’t know any better, and we didn’t think racism had anything to do with us.
How wrong we were.
I was twenty-five when I first took notice of race. An English teacher, the high school celebrated International Day annually, paying homage to more than fifty languages alone spoken within the student body. My freshmen students may have been squirrely, hard-edged adolescents, but they still wanted to be liked. Miss Mac, Miss Mac! They yelled, calling me by the first part of my maiden name. Taste our food! Watch us dance! Look at what we’re wearing!
They wanted me to see and celebrate the beauty that was theirs, the good and necessary diversity that existed within the walls of our classrooms.
So I scarfed down lumpias dipped in toyomansi from my Filipino students.
I watched a group of normally shy and reserved Mexican girls twirl and shake and smile in unison, with a recreated quincienara dance.
I laughed along with my gregarious fifth period students, Jonas and Unique, at the Black Student Union table, when they offered Kool-Aid and their respective mamas’ fried chicken with a side of outlandish humor to a waiting line of customers.
And I began to see color that day. If action stems from taking notice, my eyes were opened to the possibility of something else, because for the first time I realized it wasn’t about me. A seed had been planted: I began to see culture and race in a whole new way. I began to see our differences as a portrait of beauty.
