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On my kindergarten playground, a boy at my school started taunting and screaming at me, "your mother is white, your mother is white!" His loud and angry voice wasn't lost on me. My beautiful mother, my favorite person in the world, walked me to school every morning. Up until that moment, I don't ever remember registering the color of my mother's skin only its warmth and lovely smell. Returning home that day, as Iran into the kitchen, I too began screaming while stomping my feet and through tears, demanding, "why didn't you tell me you were white, why didn't you tell me?" Shocked, taken aback and as her eyes also welled up with tears, she sat me on her lap. She proceeded to explain to me how Black people in the United States could have "white" skin. That day was supposed to be like any other, on my mother's lap, in our living room, with the smell of chicken baking in the oven. However, that day, I listened to my first history lesson about the abomination called chattel slavery. I was..

Primary location: Sacramento United States