Segregation
When I was five, I started kindergarten at Westfield Public School in Ingersoll.
This was before Cami came to town and the population boomed. At that time, Ingersoll was just a small town. Westfield was a small school with no more than 300 students.
I was a very shy, innocent and naive kid. Everything seemed new and scary and I took everything at face value. As I came to know my classmates, one kid stood out. He could read. At five!!! He began sentences with phrases like “of course.” My mom told me his dad was a doctor.
It wasn’t until a year later, when we were learning about geography that I learned something else about this kid. He was black.
You’d think I would have noticed it sooner, but I’d never been told there were other races. To me, he was the kid that could read.
This is why I’m having a tough time understanding why “black-focused” schools are going to make people more tolerant. If I hadn’t had the privilege of knowing this boy who knows what prejudices I may have developed.
Instead of seeing people of other cultures as friends with relatives that think snow is funny, I would have been taught to see them as different.
Sure, some white teacher would have told me I should be nice to them, treat them the same, but I would have been taught to think of them as just that: THEM.
Instead I think of people of all colours, creeds and orientations as: US.
WE abolished segregation for a reason. Let US not forget it.
Kate