“No one is born with prejudice,” I often hear. And while that is true, it does come with some caveats. No one is born racist, but most small children do grow accustomed to a certain set of physical characteristics that they frequently see, and can become alarmed upon meeting someone with different characteristics.
For me as an infant, it was men with beards and/or deep voices. My father’s voice isn’t very deep, and he’s chosen to present himself as clean shaven consistently since before I was born. Of my parents’ friends, most were also clean shaven and with higher voices. When the few with beards or deep voices attempted to approach me, my mother recounted, I would cry.
The community where we lived when I was born was a very, very white one. So perhaps it was inevitable that one girl of my age would scream bloody murder at the sight of my dark-skinned father—an action which led her embarrassed parents to suddenly realize they had somewhere else to be, as the story was recounted to me.
I never noticed the skin color difference until I was put into preschool at four years old.
There was a state-mandated inclusivity session for preschools, called “We’re all different, we’re all the same.” In this session, the teachers sat us all down and explained to us that everybody is the same, even if our hair color or eye color or skin colors are different.
I have no doubt that this is a session that was useful to some children, who had already noticed that there was a difference and started acting upon it. However, for me, it had the opposite effect.
I looked around, and for the first time, realized that all the children but me and one boy had white skin, and most of them even had blond hair and blue eyes. I had boring brown eyes; stupidly dark hair; and shamefully dark skin. Obviously, I realized, if they were telling us that we were actually all the same, that meant that we weren’t. That day, I went home and cried to my mother, asking why I couldn’t have her skin, hair and eye color.
My mother was furious, but had no idea what to do except try to explain to me that I was perfect as I was. (Not that it mattered. I’d already firmly decided that white skin, blue eyes and blond hair were the Ideal.) My mother remained so furious that over twenty years later, she wrote a lengthy letter to one of my preschool teachers, detailing the damage that that single session did to my psyche.
As it turned out, that teacher was already aware of the damage. She had colored grandchildren, who had gone through a similar experience, and lamented the state mandate for the inclusivity session that seemed to have the unfortunate effect of making visible minority children aware that they were minorities.
I’ve often pondered this. It took the better part of a decade for me to grow out of the idea that someday I might be able to change my looks for the better with plastic surgery.
Yes: in my early teens, I actually became more secure with my looks. I attribute it partly to losing interest: after nine years of mentally beating myself up for being what I was, alternating between avoiding mirrors and staring into them detailing all the physical characteristics that were “wrong”—first because I wasn’t white, and then because I wasn’t Japanese—I finally simply grew tired of the stress and resigned myself to what I was. It helped that there were bigger things to worry about regarding my appearance, like my horrid acne outbreaks and my awful habit of scratching at them until they bled rivers in the middle of class.
What I most regret—what terrifies me to confess about this whole debacle, was the way I treated others. Because I was so convinced that being dark skinned was bad, I shunned the child—namely the one boy in my preschool—who was darker than I. Because being dark was bad, but being associated with other dark children, in my mind, would have made it even worse, as if somehow my skin color might change by association.
I don’t have a solution to this sort of situation. I’m sure there are excellent programs out there. This is simply my story.