My first encounter: a lasting struggle

Marquita Flowers

My First Encounter: A Lasting Struggle


Do insecurities begin with our own fears or the fears people embed in us?

When I was seven years old I experienced my first racist encounter. My best friend, Jelori, and I were on the swings in the park right near my house having a good time. We saw a white older man with his presumed daughter walking towards the park where we were very excited at the thought of a possible new playmate. We were both surprised when the father of the girl approached us and said, “Get up and move.” I was stunned and politely asked, “Why” He responded, “You know your place now move my daughter wants to swing.” I looked at the young girl who appeared to be sweet and innocent but had the views of people who hate people like me. I felt the heat within begin to rise and I said, “No, she can wait in line like I had to.” With that he turned and walked away.
This incident scarred me as a young child and made me fully aware of the dissent some whites have against people of my complexion. It made me question if my race or culture was bad and what my people had done to deserve to be treated the way they were. It made me want to be lighter so I wouldn’t have to ever face another situation like that, it made me wonder if every white person I knew was going to accept me for who I was or judge me because of something I had no control over. It made me feel less than human and created an inferiority complex that until this day I still have not fully overcome.
Being surrounded by people of color until my freshman year of high school enabled me to avoid confronting my insecurities. But once I entered a predominantly white high school there was no escaping, I was forced to deal with the negative perceptions I held of white people. I never hated white people because I understood that not every white person was a racist but I liked to keep my distance from them as a way of protecting myself just incase they were racist. My form of de facto segregation was not only to give me a level of comfort but also provided me with a level of protection I thought I needed.
It was not until my reading of the Civil rights book were I learned of a study where young children’s perception of themselves were tested through a doll study, and asked questions such as “Give me the nice doll” or “the doll that is bad “. The results of this test were disturbing because even with African American students they choose the white doll in the test not the one that represented there culture. I found this disturbing because even when I was young I wanted to play with the white doll’s they were always portrayed as the coolest or the ones with the most material possessions. But looking beyond the reasons to blaming the media what does the action of young black children preferring to play with white doll’s really symbolize. Why didn’t those children choose the white doll when they asked, “which doll is the nice doll”? Is a sense of inferiority to whites felt by children as young as 3 years old and if it is how are African American’s with insecurity issues supposed to overcome those issues if they have been embedded in us since childhood? Are we ever going to be able to impinge the days where we were looked at as inferior by the white man?
I’ll close this essay with no definitive answer because there is no definitive answer. There is not one simple conclusion to answering the question of why blacks feel inferior or less than. There is no one answer for why even after years of having justice we still feel enslaved. There is no answer or solution to not allowing others fear of being overpowered effect us. There is no solution, there is no answer so is it ever possible to overcome?