No Colour
I grew up not seeing or knowing colour. Not the colours of paintings, the sky or lipstick. The colour of people. I was lucky.
My father is brown and my mother is white. I am somewhere in between, to the naked eye, caucasian.
I was born into a culture of every ethnicity, every religion and every culture. My friends have always been a rainbow of Far East Asian decent, South East Asian decent, African decent, European decent, American decent, Middle Eastern decent, Caribbean decent and the Pacific Australias.
I never saw any difference, I saw skin colour as no different to hair or eye colour. It's the way you look but it means nothing, we are all the same. There was no black, brown, yellow, olive or white.
I was lucky. I was surrounded by every colour of person in the spectrum, and what a beautiful, happy harmonious life we led together.
I grew up in a mainly privileged "brown" society and integrated first in India, in an American Diplomat School and then in Bahrain in an international British School. My father worked for the airlines so my early life was spent in a couple of different countries in Asia and Europe before my adult schooling began. My friends were the children of diplomats, military and airline people. They came from far and wide and all intermittently settled in foreign "exotic" countries. I have old photographs from the late 1980s-early 1990s from tea parties that I have never looked twice at, despite every child in the photo being a completely different race.
I was lucky.
I knew of racism. I studied black civil rights history in school, I was both disgusted by what had happened and proud of those who stood up for themselves. I just looked around me and didn't see it. I couldn't understand how anybody could choose their friends based on the colour of their skin. Especially when I watched girls pour bottles of Coca Cola all over themselves every summer in order to obtain the deepest tan. (Yes, that was thing).
I liked everyone. Nobody taught me to like everyone. I just did. Much like my brother and as far as I could tell, my parents. My friends didn't look like me, and that didn't make any difference. I spoke to all adults with respect and wasn't "afraid" of anyone.
We traveled a lot. Through the UK, Europe, Asia and America. Australia. I didn't see it. I didn't see a problem...because I didn't see colour. In my eyes, everyone was fair game, and looking back now I can see why some people thought my over friendly behaviour was so endearing. This is up until I was 17, and had my first real boyfriend, he was South African.
My appearance of a blonde, green eyed teenager would fool most into believing I could be completely European. So that's exactly what my then boyfriend told his Africaans parents. That I was half Welsh, half Italian. Which would be true, if I was my mother. His parents eventually confronted me about my ethnic background whilst breaking the car in the middle of the highway. It didn't go down well.
And then I was 18, I was freshly an adult. I had always loved New York and couldn't wait to start the first chapter of my grown up life in the city that never sleeps. I had a childhood friend living there already - not that it ever mattered before, but she was of mixed Middle Eastern/Korean decent, though she had mostly Asian features and a more exotic skin tone. In my eyes- drop dead gorgeous.
I lived in midtown, which was a hotch-potch of races, sexual preferences and all in all a pretty exciting place to be. I started my New York journey going out a lot with my friend in places of her choosing - which was my second taste of subtle racism.
K-town, aka Korea Town. An Area of New York much like China Town, but for Koreans. My friend took me often. I didn't realise I was going to be the only non Korean there. I had never seen this kind of segregation before in my life. And then it dawned on me, "they don't want me here, everyone is staring at me."
I started noticing things more in New York. I started seeing colour. Black people only hung out with black people, Latinos with Latinos, South East Asians only hung out with South East Asians, East Asians only hung out with East Asians, Northern Europeans only hung out with Northern Europeans, Eastern Europeans only hung out with Eastern Europeans.
The whole thing perplexed me, but I noted, the more educated youth, university students and investment bankers alike - didn't seem to follow the same pattern. So what, are smart people are less racist?
Are smart people less racist?
Probably.
Without trying to sound arrogant or conceited - I am pretty smart, and over all, well educated with a well rounded scope of knowledge. Most of the people I grew up surrounded by were similar. Brighter than your average. But, that was just normal for us.
So, how does that impact the ability to not filter people based on the colour of their skin? Is it the intrinsic scientific knowledge that we as humans are, literally, all the same and our skin colour and physical features are nothing more than an evolution based mutation created to survive in different environments and climates? Kind of like short-hair and long-hair dogs/cats.
Is it also my scientific understanding that a non-pedigree species is stronger than a pedigree species in order to produce a stronger, smarter offspring? I.e. Mixing races is good.
But that knowledge and scientific fact seems lost on so many. As the years have gone on I've noted racism to become more prevalent in certain places. In London for example, I hardly noticed it. Races and ethnicities all seemed to mix beautifully and harmoniously. In Australia, racism runs deep. I don't mean just about aboriginals, but with literally anyone who isn't Saxon white, and vice versa, everybody chooses not to mix with each other. This is an incredibly segregated country that is multi cultured into a pie chart of separation - creating poor class structures and a lack of progression, evolution and education- all of which is totally accepted as a part of the culture. The US has a violent racism based on white supremacy, black suppression and Middle Eastern hatred. When I was 28, I was offloaded from a flight from London to LA. Based on my Middle Eastern last name. Everybody was seated, and airport security came to my seat, removed me from my seat - with no explanation - walked me off the plane to do one more security screening before the plane took off. They looked "confused", when they saw my appearance. When I got back on the plane, they had given my seat to somebody else, so they had full intentions of removing me from the flight, based on the origin of my last name.
Everyday I wish I could turn back the clock to not seeing colour, or I wish the rest of the world had been as lucky as I have been to be exposed to so many different types of people from such an early age that colour would be invisible to them too. But now I realise how lucky I have been, and I can only teach what I know to others who choose ignorance above knowledge, knowledge will trump all.
See no colour.
