My shame now...

    Just to make one thing clear.  I was not always the victim of ignorance.  I was also the perpetrator.  When you’re a little kid on the playground it’s like Lord of the Flies out there.  Kill or be killed.  And when I was in the second or third grade I had an Indian classmate named Mary Lou Blackburn.  She did not like me.  She did not play with me.  I did not understand in the least why not.  I will not go so far as to say she did not want to associate with the little black girl.  I can not presume.  All I know was that she was browner than me with straight black hair and whenever I tried to play with her she walked away.  This upset me because back then I thought we were supposed to stick together.  When my parents saw another black person in public they always acknowledged them.  I still do the same.  I know…right.  I nod or hello as I wheel my cart down the cookie and snacks aisle.  I did not grow up around a lot of black people so out in the sticks the culture is different.  No one is nodding and greeting in the Shaw’s in Dorchester.  

    So when this girl snubbed me for the umpteenth time on the playground I snapped.  Who is she?  She is just like me only her hair is straight and I had these big pom-pom puffs on my head resembling Mickey Mouse.  (I was called Nikki Mouse by some older kids in my neighborhood)  So why would she not talk to me.  So I called her out in the only way a second grader can call some one out…by insulting her by making fun of her name.  I said…Mary Lou is black and she’s burnt.  I am not proud of that moment.  She yelled…I am not black! And then cried and ran away.  This had not been the olive branch I had intended.  I’m not sure what I thought would happen.  She would high-five me and say…What’s up my nigga?  Sorry for dissing you at the monkey bars.  I had hurt her by insulting her name and calling her black which she wasn’t. But I didn’t know what the hell she was at that age.  But she probably had ignorant people calling her different things too.  Her family had probably been labeled something they weren’t many times.

    My point is that I made an assumption based on nothing.  She may not have liked me because I was loud…or because I was cute…Ha!  I assumed.  And you all know what happens when you assume.  My parents were great at teaching all of us tolerance of others and to treat people how we would want to be treated.  That was my first and last ignorant incident that I can recall.  But I will never forget how I made Mary Lou feel.  The pain that I passed on to her then is my shame now.