During lunch time we were playing like any other kid at school, hide and seek was our favorite game and even though we were the only ones playing it, we were completely happy. That was a normal day for me, just the two of us playing and that was enough to make me forget the comments of the other kids. Nothing mattered because we had each other.
—Daddy, you have to meet my new best friend! She loves dancing as I do— Daddy must meet her, she was the only one that didn’t say mean things to me. You see, I puked once in a class and everyone made fun of me because of that, they called me puking-girl and the teacher wouldn’t do anything to help me. But Maria was just the best.
It was finally the day daddy was going to pick me up at school and he was going to meet her, I was so excited! I saw him arrive and I ran towards him, kissed him on the cheek and then I grabbed his hand to take him to my favorite place at school. It was a big green tree and we loved to have lunch in its shadow. When we arrived, Maria was there and I said —Daddy, this is my best friend!— But there was a problem, Daddy didn’t seem as happy as I was, he shocked her hand but he looked weird, he didn’t look as happy as always and I didn’t understand why. Maybe he was just feeling sick.
—
Of course he would not tell me what was really going on in his head because I was just five years old. Years later, my mom reminded him of that moment, so he told the story. The first day of classes he was at school to buy my books and he saw this dark-skinned skinny little girl and he thought she looked dirty and hoped she would stay away from me. That little girl was the one I presented him as my best friend. It was shocking for him and almost ironic so we laughed about it like it did not matter.
He had bad prejudices towards people who have darker skin than us. Let me explain a little, we are clearly not white and the girl was not black either because in México, everyone has mixed skin color, but the darker the skin, the more you can get racialized or bullied as a kid or even as an adult. It does not go past bad looks, ignoring or avoiding, but it still counts as discrimination as it is said in Is everyone really equal? by Sensoy and DiAngelo. So I can say I have been thinking about that story lately and it is not funny anymore, actions like that one can affect a person in so many ways and the feeling of being discriminated never really goes away, for example, a lot of people cover their faces in lighter-colored makeup to make themselves look paler and therefore being more accepted in the society, but they should not have to do that to be accepted.
Now, I am able to understand that on that day, my dad discriminated my best friend just because of her looks and her skin color. Maybe he did it unconsciously or maybe not, but the results are the same: dark-skinned people are a minority and I am part of the majority, I am part of the privileged. Peggy McIntosh made me realize that and I am really glad I know it because I will do better now. I have to start by changing the way I see others in order to make a true difference.
Story time 