I cannot believe how this course is really making me remember things that happened years ago. I don’t know if these were things that had such an effect on me that I blocked it out of my mind. This week it was very easy for me to think about a time when bias and prejudice was a part of my life.
In 1997, I was working in a retail store and I met a man who later became the father of my children. At that time, I had pictured what I wanted my kids father to look like. I wanted him to look like me with light-skin and curly hair. Well, the man who walked into my store was the opposite. He was a medium-built, milk chocolate man (like a milky way) with a northern accent, but from the south.
After we had been dating for a few weeks, he asked me to meet his parents. I did without any hesitation because he was nice, well-mannered and respectful so I figured his parents couldn’t be anything less. When I got their I met his mother and she was very sweet. Then daddy came…OMG! He took one look at me and said, “Son you got you a Yellow One this time.” I could feel my face getting red from embarrassment and anger. His mother apologized for him. My friend went in the back and I could hear his daddy tell him that he was in for something now because those red-bone women are wild, bossy, and like to fight. That’s how our relationship began, but as I got to know him and his parents better I found that his dad was a good person. He spoke what was on his mind and I got use to that.
We were together for 10 years and over those years I proved that his daddy’s thoughts on light-skinned women were WRONG. I even mentioned this to his father a few years later. He didn’t even remember saying it. All of my young years I had to deal with issues of my skin color. I wasn’t going to let it interfere and be a factor in my adult life.
I had to be the bigger person and not let his comments affect how I felt about his son. After I mentioned what he had said years later he said, “Well if I said it I didn’t mean anything by it. You are a good one.” I said a good what? He said, “A good one for not cursing me out all those years because I know I have made you mad more than one time.” Yes he had. He only made that comment one time and I later found out that the other two women that he had been in a relationship with are dark-skinned. Sometimes we have to be mindful and think before we speak. Some of us allow our mouths to move faster than our brain and that can cause a problem.
Angela
arltaylor 