Brianna Sattinger

I remember a time in my life where I used to believe that racism didn’t exist in this country. That MLK and Rosa Parks had single-handedly fought the race war and desegregation had ended all of our problems. Well, at least that’s what they taught us in school. Even though I was a person of color, most of my childhood I believed that racism was the least of my problems. I was raised in a biracial household, my father being white and my mother being black and that was all I knew. I simply grew up knowing that interracial love was possible and never quite saw the racial injustices that were occurring in this country.

It wasn’t until I got older that I started to notice the undertones of racism surfacing. I will never remember the summer entering ninth grade. I had attended a running camp that summer and out of the 200 or more runners that attended, I was the only black person. I felt like the biggest sore thumb in the crowd. Even though I had a good time at camp, I remember it being a difficult week. I felt like I tried to make friends the entire time but because I didn’t look like everyone else no one really gave me a chance. The hardest part was knowing I was just like them but because of the color of my skin, people made assumptions about me before they ever got to know me.

From there forward I began to have that feeling a lot. That year, I started high school at a predominantly white school where all the schools I had attended previously were predominately black. It was during this time that I realized that a lot white people saw people of color in a different light. They automatically assumed that if black people were loud, they were ghetto. If black people listened to rap, they were thugs. If black people got angry, they should be feared because they would become violent. Did I believe that the kids at my school were straight racists? No, they were simply ignorant to the struggles of colored people and to the white privilege they possessed. It was the ignorance that hurt the most. That their ignorance could make me feel so isolated and even less than at times, and they were totally oblivious. 

I think everyone can agree that 2020 has been a rough year for everyone. But the more I look at recent events and the large support for the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s given me a little spark of hope. Finally, the ignorance that has caused me so much pain in the past is being addressed. I know the world won’t be fixed overnight, but now people are becoming more aware about how white privilege and systemic racism affects people like me everyday. And in that alone, change doesn’t seem unattainable anymore. Racism isn’t the issue, it’s the ignorance that’s the problem. It is ignorance that allows racist policies to continue, that is the issue. If we truly want change we must assess how our ignorance is contributing to the problem, then be the change we want to see in the world.