Reflective Essay About Racism

There comes a moment in every black person’s life when they realize that they are…well, black. I remember the first time it happened to me: My family had just moved out of Saint Paul to White Bear Lake, Minnesota, a suburb that is predominantly white. On my first day of school, I tiptoed awkwardly into the classroom, a deep sense of dread inside of my heart. Even at five years old, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t right, that girls like me shouldn’t go to schools like this. I took in the other girls in my class, their shiny, smooth blonde hair and their pale white skin. I caught sight of myself in a mirror propped up on my teacher’s desk: I was small and dark, my hair sticking awkwardly out the sides of my head, creating

In the past, this racism presented itself boldly and loudly in people protesting the integration of schools, the burning of crosses on black families’ front yards, and the murder of anyone who tried to break the status quo. Today, racism manifests itself in much more insidious ways; a rude look at a stranger on the street, an off-color joke, or a careless statement. It is easy for people to say that these things don’t matter, that political correctness has run amok, but that simply isn’t true. Every time a black person, or any person of color, for that matter, is forced to sit through one of these things, they learn the worst lesson of all, the lesson that society aggressively pounds into the heads of all minorities: that they are worthless. This final lesson is one that I bought into for many years, and that many people sadly still buy into today. But today, at twenty years old, I realize that it is a lie; all of the lessons that we are forced to learn are lies. This positive message is much harder for me to accept, but I realize it again and again every single day when I see young black people letting go of the chains that tied them down for so long; I realize it when I see them marching through the streets and demanding their