Le Blog

I started [in kindergarten] kind of looking at people like, huh, are they like me or are they different? I saw other cultures as well, even in elementary school.

My very earliest memory of being a woman of color was when I was in the 2nd grade. I went to a school in a predominantly white neighborhood. I was the only black child in the 2nd grade class.

She [a Costa Rican waitress] said, ‘You the negress’, in Spanish, to my mom. I remember not understanding. I remember watching my mom get really angry and really upset. Then I watched her transition from being angry to being embarrassed.

Fort Jackson, South Carolina, my sister and I were on the playground and these little boys called us black-eyed peas. We were so devastated, we ran home.

I went to a small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere – Moorhead, Minnesota. … It was 15 kids in the class. It was just different. In that one moment, in that one class, it was just me [only person of color].

It took somebody else to tell me that it was because of my skin color and once that became a thing, I started looking for it.

I was in the 7th grade, I was being teased on the bus. This one kid. I don’t know why he bothered me or said what he said. … He called me a gorilla. That shook me.

My earliest memory about being a person of color it was how I was treated. I was treated differently inside of my home because of my color and I never understood where that came from.

I went to him and said, ‘why do you keep staring at me?’ and he said, ‘ because you’re black.’… He said, ‘I never saw a black person in real life.’