Diversity

I believe in the human race, one race, and we all lend to the greater good. I wasn’t aware of a divided world until I started school. My Kindergarten class was very diverse. My two first friends in school were from a different country, Mozambique and Korea. We ate our juice and cookies together, played, sang and laid together during quiet time.

My parents best friends were a white and black couple. Their girls were my first friends, and still are. We were walking home from school and their oldest daughter started crying, she said the boys behind us called her a Zebra. I was seven and she was five, I didn’t get it. Far worse things in the world to be called. She had to explain to me, that it was because she was biracial. These boys were probably in grade six, and I remember being totally dumb founded. Then I remember being furious, that they looked beyond the person to find fault. I chased those boys with my little seven year old self and threw rocks at them for a block!

My parent’s other good friends were my babysitters. They were from Trinidad Tobago, they had three kids and their father’s voice was like music when he talked. On the weekends we would get together and they would make dishes of food hot and spicy. Their boys would talk about differences all the time, they were older. I remember my dad would have deep conversations about it with them. I wish I could remember those conversations, what I do remember was the visual. The boys were always wrestling, my dad was a big guy, not tall but like baseball mitts for hands and 26 inch arms. Dad would hold out his arms and they would climb him to see if he could hold their weight. My father’s knuckle got grazed in the ruckus and he showed the boys and said, “See, we all bleed red.”

I don’t see colour, I never have. When people start their negative conversations about other nationalities, that little seven year old girl is in there. I try to keep the rocks on the ground.