When I Recognized Race: Alicia Akins

by Alicia Akins

I came late to loving my skin. I was the fairest-skinned in my family and they teased that if I stayed outside for too long, I’d become as dark as they were and never fade. So I avoided sunlight. I’d bought into colorism—the idea that the lighter your skin the better....

When I Recognized Race: Nylse Esahc

by Nylse Esahc

I always say I recognized race and that I was black when I came to New York in 1978. For the first twelve years of my life, I lived in the Bahamas. We were a large family doing OK for ourselves. We could hire someone to do the cleaning and look down our noses on...

When I Recognized Race: Ryan King

by Ryan King

“At the end of the American Civil War in 1865, a Union soldier observed that the remains of the Confederate army consisted of boys and old men. Upon asking what had happened to ‘Johnny Reb’, he was told, “he died at Gettysburg”. That statement may or may not be...

When I Recognized Race: Beth Palmer

by Beth Palmer

“What are you?”   I first remember hearing that question when I was in preschool. I had not yet truly Recognized Race. My family had just moved to the Northern Virginia area, and I was introducing myself to my classmates on the first day of school. Before I was...

Courtney Reissig: When I Recognized Race

by Courtney Reissig

Editor’s Note: This post is a part of a series called, “When I Recognized Race” in which brothers and sisters share about how they came to grapple with the realities of race and racism. The point of this series is not to convey, “Look at how racially conscious I am!”...