Tinted Lenses by Karla Hardy
All my life, I have been surrounded by a diverse group of people. From childhood I knew that people looked differently, and they were different. So? What was the significance of that? If they liked me and treated me right, I was nice to them and treated them right. If they didn’t like me, I didn’t like them and struggled to treat them right. That was the simplistic nature of the way I thought and perceived people around me. Apparently that was something I was supposed to grow out of.
Nearing the end of my elementary school days, I began to hear talk of my being “too White”. I listened to “White folks music“. I never watched much television or listened to the radio, so I was behind on all the new artists and sitcoms of the day. My sisters and I were listening to Billy Ocean when our peers had moved on to “Kid and Play“. I talked “like a White girl.“ I never really adapted an accent, and slang was highly limited in my vocabulary. My parents made a point of speaking intelligently; I learned the same. I was “trying to be White”. In my opinion, my family was, and is, generally different from most others, regardless of race. And why did I have to be White to speak and act intelligently? But, my “trying to be White” ostracized me from my Black peers, and I shied away from them. I was “too White”.
As a result, I adopted a “Black is bad; White is better” attitude. “Black” music - rap, R&B, reggae - was bad. The rock and alternative that my White friends liked was better. “Black people’s” clothes were bad. The open flannel shirt with a white T-shirt under it with jeans and Converse sneakers that my White friends wore were better. Since my parents would not spend $110 dollars on a pair of black Converse sneakers, I wore a generic pair that was two sizes too big for me just to look cool. “Fresh”. My straight, bouncy, chemically relaxed hair was better than natural Black hairstyles, and I thoroughly enjoyed flinging my hair “like a White girl’s”. I cannot remember having a single Black friend during my first days of middle school. White people were better.
Then, my family moved from Oklahoma City to Kansas City, Kansas during Christmas Break of my sixth grade year. I was devastated. I was just starting to fit in with my friends. Now I had to make new friends, and I could not imagine any of these people being as “fresh” as my friends back home. Turns out, I made new friends quickly. Yet, I held to my “Black is bad; White is better” attitude.
That summer, my sisters and I were enrolled in a day camp called “Friends of Yates”. Every student, faculty, and staff member in this program was Black. The program was housed in an old building in the heart of downtown Kansas City, Kansas. I had never experienced anything like this, and I was scared at the thought of it. Besides our other activities, we listened to light rap and R&B and danced “hip hop” every day. We played cards and dominoes. We even watched Boys in the Hood one day. Much to my surprise, I liked it.
I don’t know who in my family had the wisdom to put us in a program like this. But looking back, “Friends of Yates” was the best thing that could have happened in my life at that time. It provided a balance by giving me a view of the other side. I saw African American people interacting, and nobody was getting shot, as television and the news media was so eager to make us believe. The music, the movies, the slang; it was okay. I did not leave the program thinking that African American people were better than Caucasian people. Nor did I leave with a colored view of the world. I left knowing who I was. I liked all kinds of music. I liked the clothes that fit me. I liked the hair that was manageable. I liked the people who liked me and loved those who didn’t. I liked what I liked because I was me. People were just people; no one was better than anyone else just because of the color of their skin. I could now look back and remember my White peers in sixth grade smoking, drinking, and doing drugs; there were Black kids my age doing the same. Black and White only vaguely defined skin color. It did not define preferences in music, speech, or style. Every individual defined that for himself.
So when I had to move to Tyler, Texas after my seventh grade year, I had a much better grasp of who I was as a person. I became friends with nice people, not African American people. I avoided ignorant, troublemaking people, not Caucasian people. I had a problem with my new school because its mascot was a gopher, not because it had a diverse population. I found it peculiar that the town was essentially divided along racial lines. The schools, especially the two public high schools, were strongly divided into the Black/Hispanic schools and the White schools. I had never noticed blatant prejudice in my community before; it had only been inside of me. With advanced classes, though, my school environment was well mixed, and I enjoyed myself.
Things started to change during my sophomore year in high school. The class ranks were released after the first semester of freshman year. I was number one in the class. Surprised and happy, I took it all in stride. I had always been successful in school. I loved school. I was that kid who looked forward to the summer being over so school could start up again. I had been in “gifted” classes since second grade, and I was “Valedictorian” of my fifth grade class. Though I only spent a year at Stewart Middle School in Tyler, I graduated from eighth grade with numerous academic and citizenship awards. And I had only made one ’B’ on my report card in my entire school career. So when class ranks came out, I was thankful but mindful not to be boastful.
Still, it did not take long for the students in my classes to know the ranking. One day in class, a few guys started teasing me, saying, “Tim’s going to beat you. We’re going to kill you, and he’s going to be number one. “ I was surprised. I knew they were just kidding, but how did they know the ranking? By this time, I knew who number two was as well. Tim Shareford.^ But I did not know
anyone else’s rank, and frankly, I was not concerned. Why did my rank matter to them? I shrugged and laughed off their teasing.
The teasing persisted, and I continued to laugh in good sport. I persisted in my studies while devoting a lot of time to extracurricular activities. As junior year started, our classes got much smaller. With the rigorous academic program that we were in, many students left our classes to pursue easier course loads. As the classes diminished, our relationships with our classmates got stronger and more closely nit. Only one other Black person remained in my classes (though the school was predominately Black), but I got along fine. It was at this point that Tim Shareford became a physical presence in my life. He had been present in my mind ever since those guys had started teasing me, but I had never really talked to him before. He was so quiet. Now we had almost every class together, and with our class sizes, you could not avoid anyone. So there Tim was. Neat.
October rolled around, and it was time for Homecoming. As a Student Council officer, I was responsible for selling a certain number of tickets. I was on a mission. I asked everybody I could. I’m sure my classmates were tired of hearing from me. Then, one day I looked over and saw Tim sitting there, quietly. Had I ever seen him at one of our school dances or social events? I could not recall a single one that he had attended. As a matter of fact, Tim was not very sociable at all. So I decided that I would get him to go to the dance. I could meet my ticket goal at the same time.
For a week I asked Tim to buy a ticket to the dance. It will be fun. You could take someone nice. Why not her? Oh, she has a date. Okay, well, you can just go by yourself. It will be lots of fun. On Friday, the day before the dance, I still had not convinced Tim to buy a ticket to the dance. I thought I would give it a last shot. I asked him. “Okay, Karla, I’ll go to the dance with you”, he said. With me? I was stunned. I was well aware of the fact that I did not have a date at the time, but I had not been asking Tim to take me to the dance. I just wanted to get him out to have some fun. And sell my tickets. My face turned into a blustering smile, and I said,” Okay. Um, sure. Okay.” A few weeks later, we were dating. “Together“. It was the most unplanned relationship I had ever had with anyone.
I thought it was so cute that number one and number two in the class were able to enjoy each other’s company without having any underlying resentment. My mom, however, warned against it. Such close academic competitors should beware of getting too close to each other in a romantic relationship. She had seen things happen before.
He could be trying to trip you up, Karla.
I did not want to hear that. All I could see was that my parents were uncomfortable with our being together. I wasn’t. They had lived in a different time. I hadn‘t. We were having fun. Finally, someone who understood the workload that I was carrying, while trying to balance the rest of my life. We could study together; we had almost every class together. Besides, Tim wanted to be with me. He had initiated everything. How could I get hurt?
Despite quite a bit of attention and controversy, our relationship lasted for four months. Then Tim broke up with me. I cried. I was disappointed. Just as I would have been if any guy had broken up with me. But I was determined that Tim and I would remain friends. That’s what we had always been, right? The next week Tim asked me, “ How would you feel if I was number one, and you were number two?” My annoyance well covered, I replied, “ I’d be happy for you, Tim.” Right after class, I went to check the new class ranks. I was number two.
Highly annoyed, my initial thought was to just buckle back down and push back to the top. I had been a little distracted, but now I would focus on my work. After God and my family, school was my priority. It was my job. I had to do it well.
I noticed that Tim had started being somewhat rude to me. He acted arrogant in class, and a couple times, he even cheered, “I’m number one. I’m number one”. This really annoyed me. Then one
day, the subject of my relationship with Tim came up in a project group, and one of the girls asked me
why I had liked him. He was a nice guy. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “One day, while you two were together, he came to the lunch table, and someone started teasing him about your relationship. He said that he was just going with you to be doing something, that he didn’t really like you.” That hit me like a ton of bricks. My eyes were opened. How could he have liked me? I was a dark Black girl. He was White. He could not have found me attractive. In that short moment, my view became colored. I was keenly aware of how Tyler, Texas looked at our relationship. It was just ‘something to do.’
I had liked Tim. I had liked him for who he was. I had opened my true self to him, and he had deceived me. Then, I overheard some girl talking about how she liked Tim. They would be perfect together: she was White. So was he. I was crushed. Seeing Black and White again.
Around October the National Merit Corporation named its scholars. I was National Merit Commended, along with one other guy. I was the only National Achievement Scholar from our school, with two other students being National Achievement Commended. One student from our school was named a National Hispanic Scholar. Tim was not recognized. One day at lunch, one of my friends started complaining that he had made a higher score than the National Hispanic scholar, but he was not awarded. At this Tim chimed in, “Yeah. Why do they have those special awards for National Achievement and National Hispanic Scholars? They don’t have a special award for White people. We are all the same. We all get treated the same. Blacks and Hispanics don’t need any special awards.” I was astonished, furious. We were supposed to be friends; he was supposed to be happy about my accomplishment. I understood part of his point. We should all be the same, be treated the same. I would love to see it that way. But we weren’t. The majority of society treated minorities differently, stereotyping, passing negative prejudgments. He had treated me differently because of my skin color,
and, once, I had done the same to others. Society had taught us all that Black was bad. Besides, the fact of the matter is that this National Merit Commended, National Achievement Scholar outperformed him on the test. The grading machine did not see our race when it produced our scores. He could have been blue or darker than night, and I still scored higher on the test. Abolish the awards, and that fact would not change. Friends. Right.
Despite my social disillusionment, my college campaign progressed nicely. I was being offered full scholarships to several universities, if I would only apply. In March, I was named one of twenty-one finalists out of over 8,800 applicants for the Ron Brown Scholar Program; the program was going to fly me to Washington, D.C. for a selection weekend, all expense paid. I was ecstatic.
I went and met twenty of the most intelligent people I have ever met. While in D.C., we launched an extensive discussion of the issue of racial and ethnic background and awards based on such. Faced with these questions for the first time, my thoughts stumbled upon the sad reality. Minority scholarships were still needed because the people making the decisions about who got what - jobs, education, scholarships - were generally of a generation that still made decisions based on prejudices. Until our generation could make the decisions, minority programs and scholarships were needed to make up the difference. And what made us all fit into the same box- African American, Black - anyway? One of the Scholars was half Russian and half African, another half Japanese and half African American, another half Caucasian and half African American; the list went on. Why were we all “Black”? Because of the way people looked at us. As in the times of slavery, even if a child looked as “white” as the master’s legitimate children, the “Black” blood of the child’s mother made him a nigger. Black. Our identity was so much defined by someone else’s choosing. According to society, we all talked the same, liked the same music, the same clothes, the same hairstyles. Saddened, I emerged with better perspective.
I returned from my weekend with twenty new friends and a $40,000 scholarship. I was so happy, and naturally I expected my friends to share my joy. Yet, again, at lunch, Tim started talking about minority scholarships and how they were unfair. I could not believe it. Despite our troubles, I still considered Tim a friend. Apparently, I was mistaken. My elation came crashing down. What was his problem? He had numerous opportunities ahead of him. That evening I checked my email to discover that each and every one of the new Ron Brown Scholars had experienced the same thing upon their arrival back home. Their White peers had negative words and looks to give them. My perception was not misguided; people across the nation felt like Tim did. Black people were not supposed to be as successful as White people. I was hurt, knowing that I had tried to look at people for who they were, not for what they looked like. But when it boiled down to it, to them, I was black.
I have yet to recover from the pain of that realization. I still conduct myself for who I am. I like the same music, wear the same clothes, fight with the same nappy hair, and talk the same way. But I walk around, ever questioning how people are looking at me, what they are thinking. I am afraid that my White peers will find me worthy of sharing a good laugh or an intellectual conversation. Not good enough to date, though; close relationships are out of the question. I know that every Caucasian person does not think this way, but when your close friends see you as black, “Limited Access“, you don’t know what to think. I suppose now I understand my dad’s childhood wish to wake up from his bad dream and be a little white boy. I love my brown skin. I just wish the blackness would wash away.
^ Name has been changed
Nearing the end of my elementary school days, I began to hear talk of my being “too White”. I listened to “White folks music“. I never watched much television or listened to the radio, so I was behind on all the new artists and sitcoms of the day. My sisters and I were listening to Billy Ocean when our peers had moved on to “Kid and Play“. I talked “like a White girl.“ I never really adapted an accent, and slang was highly limited in my vocabulary. My parents made a point of speaking intelligently; I learned the same. I was “trying to be White”. In my opinion, my family was, and is, generally different from most others, regardless of race. And why did I have to be White to speak and act intelligently? But, my “trying to be White” ostracized me from my Black peers, and I shied away from them. I was “too White”.
As a result, I adopted a “Black is bad; White is better” attitude. “Black” music - rap, R&B, reggae - was bad. The rock and alternative that my White friends liked was better. “Black people’s” clothes were bad. The open flannel shirt with a white T-shirt under it with jeans and Converse sneakers that my White friends wore were better. Since my parents would not spend $110 dollars on a pair of black Converse sneakers, I wore a generic pair that was two sizes too big for me just to look cool. “Fresh”. My straight, bouncy, chemically relaxed hair was better than natural Black hairstyles, and I thoroughly enjoyed flinging my hair “like a White girl’s”. I cannot remember having a single Black friend during my first days of middle school. White people were better.
Then, my family moved from Oklahoma City to Kansas City, Kansas during Christmas Break of my sixth grade year. I was devastated. I was just starting to fit in with my friends. Now I had to make new friends, and I could not imagine any of these people being as “fresh” as my friends back home. Turns out, I made new friends quickly. Yet, I held to my “Black is bad; White is better” attitude.
That summer, my sisters and I were enrolled in a day camp called “Friends of Yates”. Every student, faculty, and staff member in this program was Black. The program was housed in an old building in the heart of downtown Kansas City, Kansas. I had never experienced anything like this, and I was scared at the thought of it. Besides our other activities, we listened to light rap and R&B and danced “hip hop” every day. We played cards and dominoes. We even watched Boys in the Hood one day. Much to my surprise, I liked it.
I don’t know who in my family had the wisdom to put us in a program like this. But looking back, “Friends of Yates” was the best thing that could have happened in my life at that time. It provided a balance by giving me a view of the other side. I saw African American people interacting, and nobody was getting shot, as television and the news media was so eager to make us believe. The music, the movies, the slang; it was okay. I did not leave the program thinking that African American people were better than Caucasian people. Nor did I leave with a colored view of the world. I left knowing who I was. I liked all kinds of music. I liked the clothes that fit me. I liked the hair that was manageable. I liked the people who liked me and loved those who didn’t. I liked what I liked because I was me. People were just people; no one was better than anyone else just because of the color of their skin. I could now look back and remember my White peers in sixth grade smoking, drinking, and doing drugs; there were Black kids my age doing the same. Black and White only vaguely defined skin color. It did not define preferences in music, speech, or style. Every individual defined that for himself.
So when I had to move to Tyler, Texas after my seventh grade year, I had a much better grasp of who I was as a person. I became friends with nice people, not African American people. I avoided ignorant, troublemaking people, not Caucasian people. I had a problem with my new school because its mascot was a gopher, not because it had a diverse population. I found it peculiar that the town was essentially divided along racial lines. The schools, especially the two public high schools, were strongly divided into the Black/Hispanic schools and the White schools. I had never noticed blatant prejudice in my community before; it had only been inside of me. With advanced classes, though, my school environment was well mixed, and I enjoyed myself.
Things started to change during my sophomore year in high school. The class ranks were released after the first semester of freshman year. I was number one in the class. Surprised and happy, I took it all in stride. I had always been successful in school. I loved school. I was that kid who looked forward to the summer being over so school could start up again. I had been in “gifted” classes since second grade, and I was “Valedictorian” of my fifth grade class. Though I only spent a year at Stewart Middle School in Tyler, I graduated from eighth grade with numerous academic and citizenship awards. And I had only made one ’B’ on my report card in my entire school career. So when class ranks came out, I was thankful but mindful not to be boastful.
Still, it did not take long for the students in my classes to know the ranking. One day in class, a few guys started teasing me, saying, “Tim’s going to beat you. We’re going to kill you, and he’s going to be number one. “ I was surprised. I knew they were just kidding, but how did they know the ranking? By this time, I knew who number two was as well. Tim Shareford.^ But I did not know
anyone else’s rank, and frankly, I was not concerned. Why did my rank matter to them? I shrugged and laughed off their teasing.
The teasing persisted, and I continued to laugh in good sport. I persisted in my studies while devoting a lot of time to extracurricular activities. As junior year started, our classes got much smaller. With the rigorous academic program that we were in, many students left our classes to pursue easier course loads. As the classes diminished, our relationships with our classmates got stronger and more closely nit. Only one other Black person remained in my classes (though the school was predominately Black), but I got along fine. It was at this point that Tim Shareford became a physical presence in my life. He had been present in my mind ever since those guys had started teasing me, but I had never really talked to him before. He was so quiet. Now we had almost every class together, and with our class sizes, you could not avoid anyone. So there Tim was. Neat.
October rolled around, and it was time for Homecoming. As a Student Council officer, I was responsible for selling a certain number of tickets. I was on a mission. I asked everybody I could. I’m sure my classmates were tired of hearing from me. Then, one day I looked over and saw Tim sitting there, quietly. Had I ever seen him at one of our school dances or social events? I could not recall a single one that he had attended. As a matter of fact, Tim was not very sociable at all. So I decided that I would get him to go to the dance. I could meet my ticket goal at the same time.
For a week I asked Tim to buy a ticket to the dance. It will be fun. You could take someone nice. Why not her? Oh, she has a date. Okay, well, you can just go by yourself. It will be lots of fun. On Friday, the day before the dance, I still had not convinced Tim to buy a ticket to the dance. I thought I would give it a last shot. I asked him. “Okay, Karla, I’ll go to the dance with you”, he said. With me? I was stunned. I was well aware of the fact that I did not have a date at the time, but I had not been asking Tim to take me to the dance. I just wanted to get him out to have some fun. And sell my tickets. My face turned into a blustering smile, and I said,” Okay. Um, sure. Okay.” A few weeks later, we were dating. “Together“. It was the most unplanned relationship I had ever had with anyone.
I thought it was so cute that number one and number two in the class were able to enjoy each other’s company without having any underlying resentment. My mom, however, warned against it. Such close academic competitors should beware of getting too close to each other in a romantic relationship. She had seen things happen before.
He could be trying to trip you up, Karla.
I did not want to hear that. All I could see was that my parents were uncomfortable with our being together. I wasn’t. They had lived in a different time. I hadn‘t. We were having fun. Finally, someone who understood the workload that I was carrying, while trying to balance the rest of my life. We could study together; we had almost every class together. Besides, Tim wanted to be with me. He had initiated everything. How could I get hurt?
Despite quite a bit of attention and controversy, our relationship lasted for four months. Then Tim broke up with me. I cried. I was disappointed. Just as I would have been if any guy had broken up with me. But I was determined that Tim and I would remain friends. That’s what we had always been, right? The next week Tim asked me, “ How would you feel if I was number one, and you were number two?” My annoyance well covered, I replied, “ I’d be happy for you, Tim.” Right after class, I went to check the new class ranks. I was number two.
Highly annoyed, my initial thought was to just buckle back down and push back to the top. I had been a little distracted, but now I would focus on my work. After God and my family, school was my priority. It was my job. I had to do it well.
I noticed that Tim had started being somewhat rude to me. He acted arrogant in class, and a couple times, he even cheered, “I’m number one. I’m number one”. This really annoyed me. Then one
day, the subject of my relationship with Tim came up in a project group, and one of the girls asked me
why I had liked him. He was a nice guy. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “One day, while you two were together, he came to the lunch table, and someone started teasing him about your relationship. He said that he was just going with you to be doing something, that he didn’t really like you.” That hit me like a ton of bricks. My eyes were opened. How could he have liked me? I was a dark Black girl. He was White. He could not have found me attractive. In that short moment, my view became colored. I was keenly aware of how Tyler, Texas looked at our relationship. It was just ‘something to do.’
I had liked Tim. I had liked him for who he was. I had opened my true self to him, and he had deceived me. Then, I overheard some girl talking about how she liked Tim. They would be perfect together: she was White. So was he. I was crushed. Seeing Black and White again.
Around October the National Merit Corporation named its scholars. I was National Merit Commended, along with one other guy. I was the only National Achievement Scholar from our school, with two other students being National Achievement Commended. One student from our school was named a National Hispanic Scholar. Tim was not recognized. One day at lunch, one of my friends started complaining that he had made a higher score than the National Hispanic scholar, but he was not awarded. At this Tim chimed in, “Yeah. Why do they have those special awards for National Achievement and National Hispanic Scholars? They don’t have a special award for White people. We are all the same. We all get treated the same. Blacks and Hispanics don’t need any special awards.” I was astonished, furious. We were supposed to be friends; he was supposed to be happy about my accomplishment. I understood part of his point. We should all be the same, be treated the same. I would love to see it that way. But we weren’t. The majority of society treated minorities differently, stereotyping, passing negative prejudgments. He had treated me differently because of my skin color,
and, once, I had done the same to others. Society had taught us all that Black was bad. Besides, the fact of the matter is that this National Merit Commended, National Achievement Scholar outperformed him on the test. The grading machine did not see our race when it produced our scores. He could have been blue or darker than night, and I still scored higher on the test. Abolish the awards, and that fact would not change. Friends. Right.
Despite my social disillusionment, my college campaign progressed nicely. I was being offered full scholarships to several universities, if I would only apply. In March, I was named one of twenty-one finalists out of over 8,800 applicants for the Ron Brown Scholar Program; the program was going to fly me to Washington, D.C. for a selection weekend, all expense paid. I was ecstatic.
I went and met twenty of the most intelligent people I have ever met. While in D.C., we launched an extensive discussion of the issue of racial and ethnic background and awards based on such. Faced with these questions for the first time, my thoughts stumbled upon the sad reality. Minority scholarships were still needed because the people making the decisions about who got what - jobs, education, scholarships - were generally of a generation that still made decisions based on prejudices. Until our generation could make the decisions, minority programs and scholarships were needed to make up the difference. And what made us all fit into the same box- African American, Black - anyway? One of the Scholars was half Russian and half African, another half Japanese and half African American, another half Caucasian and half African American; the list went on. Why were we all “Black”? Because of the way people looked at us. As in the times of slavery, even if a child looked as “white” as the master’s legitimate children, the “Black” blood of the child’s mother made him a nigger. Black. Our identity was so much defined by someone else’s choosing. According to society, we all talked the same, liked the same music, the same clothes, the same hairstyles. Saddened, I emerged with better perspective.
I returned from my weekend with twenty new friends and a $40,000 scholarship. I was so happy, and naturally I expected my friends to share my joy. Yet, again, at lunch, Tim started talking about minority scholarships and how they were unfair. I could not believe it. Despite our troubles, I still considered Tim a friend. Apparently, I was mistaken. My elation came crashing down. What was his problem? He had numerous opportunities ahead of him. That evening I checked my email to discover that each and every one of the new Ron Brown Scholars had experienced the same thing upon their arrival back home. Their White peers had negative words and looks to give them. My perception was not misguided; people across the nation felt like Tim did. Black people were not supposed to be as successful as White people. I was hurt, knowing that I had tried to look at people for who they were, not for what they looked like. But when it boiled down to it, to them, I was black.
I have yet to recover from the pain of that realization. I still conduct myself for who I am. I like the same music, wear the same clothes, fight with the same nappy hair, and talk the same way. But I walk around, ever questioning how people are looking at me, what they are thinking. I am afraid that my White peers will find me worthy of sharing a good laugh or an intellectual conversation. Not good enough to date, though; close relationships are out of the question. I know that every Caucasian person does not think this way, but when your close friends see you as black, “Limited Access“, you don’t know what to think. I suppose now I understand my dad’s childhood wish to wake up from his bad dream and be a little white boy. I love my brown skin. I just wish the blackness would wash away.
^ Name has been changed
posted by Robert at 9:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home