Do You Feel Your Opression?

Let me give you some context to my life. I grew up in a rural town in back woods, Connecticut, and I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t a very diverse location. We have more types of horses at my barn then we did different ethnicities at my school. You think I’m kidding, I’m not- in a high school of close to a thousand kids, there were five people of color- and that was painful for me. I have little experience working in an urban environment or with people who aren’t white, middle class, rural kids, and that in itself scares me. I came to RIC because I needed to branch out, get a feel for diversity, expand my horizons, but I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into.

Last semester I was at my friends apartment in providence, and she asked me to go retrieve something from her car. I’m going to be honest, I told her I didn’t think I could do it, cause it was a city, and I would get jumped. Now I know that part of my fear is that, being homosexual female that has been raped, I’m a little more on edge then most people, but I also know that those of you that grew up in an urban environment think I’m a little irrational right about now. In these situations I often think of the people of color in my high school, who always complained that its always the people of color that are portrayed as the bad guys that will hurt you, and that they all live in the city and racism, white prejudice and so on. And then it struck me, and this is the part that I find so funny- the images playing through my head of who was going to jump me, rape me, or kidnap me, should I go out to the car alone, had nothing to do with people of color, in fact, if anything, they were white as milk. My fear was that a middle aged white man was going to come jump me in the middle of providence.

I am not saying that growing up in the country made me somehow devoid of racism, as I know there are such people, like my father, that will tell you with Obama as president the world is now in the hands of the devil, but I find it strange that growing up in a very white setting, melanin content in skin is not the first thing I notice. I notice what gender people present, what their sexual orientation is, how old they are, and if I feel comfortable with their vibe, long before I think about their ethnicity. I guess what I am wondering is how other people feel about it. For those of you who are people of color- do you feel it everyday? Is it the fist thing that you think about when you meet someone for the first time? When you get fired, or watch someone get a promotion you should have had, do you find yourself thinking it is because of your ethnicity?