If Only I Could Wipe Racism from My Child's World and My Memory

When I was a little girl, I remember laying on my grandma's floor watching the news. There was a story where a group had attacked a group of Mexicans. The idea was crazy to my naive and trusting mind. Why would anyone beat someone up just because they were Mexican? I had to ask my grandmother. The conversation opened up a treasure chest of stories of racism and hate that my grandmother had endured all her life. At the time, as a five-year-old, my world spun out of control learning that people were going to hate others simply because of their culture. You see, as I stood there looking up at my grandmother, with her beautiful auburn hair and fair, porcelain-like skin, I realized it didn't even matter if we didn't look Mexican. My relationship with racism would soon grow.