http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/02/us/first-time-i-realized-i-was-black/
When I was about seven or eight years old, I was a very outgoing child and tended to spend most of my days outside running and playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. Before we went home each night, we would make plans to meet at one house or another for the next day's play. On this day, I asked my relatively new friend if we could play over his house tomorrow, but was told no because "my dad doesn't like black people". That was the first time I realized I was black.
Please feel free to share yours as well.
W. E. Burghardt Du Bois said:It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first burst upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cardsten cents a packageand exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
When I was about seven or eight years old, I was a very outgoing child and tended to spend most of my days outside running and playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. Before we went home each night, we would make plans to meet at one house or another for the next day's play. On this day, I asked my relatively new friend if we could play over his house tomorrow, but was told no because "my dad doesn't like black people". That was the first time I realized I was black.
Please feel free to share yours as well.