This might be a good place to share a piece or two of my childhood with you all.

When I was 3-4 my parents were in line somewhere like Kmart or Walmart and there was a black person behind my parents. I was in the cart facing backwards. I asked (at the top of my lungs), "MOMMY, IS THAT A NIGGER?" According to my parents, that's probably the first time I ever saw a black person irl.

The first black person I remember seeing and talking to on anything close to a regular basis was a kid in my grade who transferred to my elementary school for about 6 months and his name was Jamal. He lived with his mom and never knew his dad.

After that, I didn't really interact with any black people at all until I was in high school. I also wasn't regularly around anyone who was hispanic or Asian until high school. There were a few dozen hispanic kids and maybe two or three Asians. To give an idea of the size of my high school, there were about 290 people in my graduating class.

When I was say 6-7 or so, I truly believed that "the reason Mexicans and black people don't get along is that the black people are scared Mexicans are going to steal their welfare."

When I was 12 or 13, maybe 14, it was the first time they stopped letting this off-shoot of the KKK have a "float" (ie: a small trailer being pulled by a pickup truck, like all of the other floats) in the July 4th parade in the nearest town to here.

When I was somewhere around 9 I started to have actual thoughts and sort of took it for granted from then on that racism was pretty stupid. To me it's interesting because I truly have no idea where it came from. I hadn't really interacted with other races to have something to conflict with the information I was being given from my parents. I often wonder why I had that moment at such a young age and why people like my dad never had it at all.