Blind

As a biracial woman growing up was not easy. My mother is black and my father is white. I also have a black sister and a Japanese sister along with my twin. Nice right?  So when the family when out, we got stared at a lot. Looking back on it I think people were just trying to figure out how that was possible. I am not going to draw a diagram of my family, just trust me, they are my sisters and the two I call my parents are my parents. No adoption happened, its all biological. Being a military child had its perks. Growing up on a military base, everyone was different so we never got stared at or had rude things said to us. It was once we left the base we encountered that type of behavior.

Growing up after my parents retired from the military meant we attended the public schools in the area. This is when I first realized my family wasn't like others. The color of skin mattered to outsiders way more than it did in my world. Grade school in Illinois was the first place someone made fun of my hair because it was curly and a little frizzy, high school was the place where I got to play a nice balancing act. "she isn't white but she isn't black." Your identity is based on what color your skin is and that was hard to understand. I really never liked going places with just my mom outside of the base, I would get upset at people that stared in the small city we grew up in. When I was in high school, my mother would try to hold my hand in public and I would shy away from it. It wasn't till I got to college that I finally saw that I am beautiful the way God made me and my family is pretty cool. I till this day will hold my mother's hand whenever she reaches for it. I even grab hers too.

My parents implanted the mind set that we are all the same and color is nothing. Its the character you have, behind the beautiful shades of color you happen to have, that matters. In a way our parents taught us to be colored blind. Maybe that is why my middle sister adopted three children in the last year. She didn't see three white children, she saw three children that needed love and a home and she and her husband, along with their two children welcomed them into our family. We do not see color.
IN my classroom I would treat all my students the same. When they would find out that I was not white, it would blow their mind. They then started to see that I don't see color, its character and that is it. I am blinded to your hair, your race, your religion, political views, its about who you are as a human being. Guess what, we all share that in common and we can't be blinded by that. We all bleed the same color of deep red blood and we all breath the same air into our lungs. So I ask that today you walk blindly into the world and love people for their hearts not the color of their skin. If being blind is hard for you, it just means you have to practice. So go forth and be blind.