- Normative Narratives
My own story appeals to a universalized humanity. At five years old, and without any prior exposure to any other cultures, we had no reason to think any differently about a classmate who had dark skin. We knew he was different from the rest of the class, but did not yet know what that meant. “Most of my class were being raised in the same town that their parents had been, if not on the same farm, or in the same house, but here was this boy who looked very different from us all, and was from not only another town, but another country. For 5-year-olds, this was very hard to wrap our minds around.” (https://edusites.uregina.ca/nicoleray/2021/02/08/writing-the-self-differences/)
We all want to believe that we see people only for who they are, and that the color of their skin is not something we notice, but that is not the case. We have been socialized to see the differences in people, and taught that the visible differences we can see separate us into different classes. To claim that you are unaffected by this socialization is a common rebuttal to the idea that one may contribute to the systematic racism in our country. “I feel like I almost never noticed when someone had different skin colour then me. My best friend throughout Elementary and High School was black so, it was just normal to me.” (https://edusites.uregina.ca/jennarhodes/)
As a white person, it is easy to ignore the advantages that have been allowed to me solely because of the colour of my skin. It is much harder to open your mind up to the fact that we as a society are actively keeping people of colour down for the sole purpose of maintaining our own sense of power. This attitude starts at a young age, as a result of our socialization. We do not need to be actively involved in acts that are typically seen as racist to be contributing to the systematic racism. “At school only the white kids would hang out, nobody would include the others. At lunch people would bring something that wasn’t “normal food” and would get picked on. Racism is all around us, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you might miss it.” (https://edusites.uregina.ca/knoll/2021/02/09/racism-in-school/. Like Jenna and Riley, I move through life not consciously noticing people’s skin colour, but when I force myself to stop and think back to first impressions, like in my own story, skin colour is one of the first characteristics that we will notice. Like it or not it is something that we need to recognize in order to make any real change.
Wanbli’s story paints a vivid picture of what it is like to experience racism from the perspective of a person of colour. To hear racist remarks from a young child just shows how strong our socialization affects us. ‘“I said you’re all brownies! You’re all racist and brown and I hate you!” she yells as she reaches around to push my sister back down as I was helping her to her feet. I feel a switch, turning on my anger and shutting off my senses. In a blind rage, I throw myself at her and we crash into the ground. Before I could strangle her, my brother yanks me off of her and starts dragging me down the street’ (https://wombom96.wordpress.com/). Wanbli’s initial reaction to the girl who did not want to talk to her shows that she has not yet learned the reality of systematic racism, where as her brother’s actions show that this is something he has become used to and almost expected.
This story can support the “bad apple” theory. “The people that commit these intentional acts are deemed bad, and those that don’t are good. If we are against racism and unaware of committing racist acts, we can’t be racist; racism and being a good person have become mutually exclusive.” (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism_b_7183710) Because of the harsh contrast between the stories, it is easy to look at the initial ones and invalidate the claims of oppression as oversensitivity, but what we often forget is that people of colour are forced to deal with these types of encounters on a daily basis.