When I was in high school I read a book called “Black Like Me”. The book is about a white journalist who temporarily has his skin darkened to experience the realities of what it was like to live a black man’s life in the segregated South. The book resonated with me recalling experiences I had as a young boy moving from a South Texas Hispanic community to the Bay Area. Looking back as a grown man, I can now see pivotal moments of my youth that shaped my thinking, with the biggest being that skin color mattered.
I am one of 7 kids, all of which, except for one, are very fair in complexion. If it were not for our last name, you would think that we were caucasian. When we moved to California, we found a place to live close to the Naval Air Station where my dad was employed. It was a place referred to as “the projects” and was a predominantly black community. It was evident that we were not welcome or at least it seemed so to my parents. So after about a year we moved to an all white neighborhood in the sleepy community of Fremont.
We didn’t talk about things but I’m pretty certain we were hoping that fitting in visually would be easier than fitting in socially. I recall an incident in school when I spoke to my second grade teacher in Spanish. I was abruptly told, “This is America, and we only speak American here”. When I went home and told my parents, they immediately stopped speaking Spanish in the home and also in public when white people were present. It was very confusing to watch this play out as a kid. We would live out a “chameleon like” lifestyle, changing how we acted, depending on what skin demographic we were mingling with. This would later become the fuel for anger and racism within me throughout my teen years. I was faced with the dilemma of being looked upon as non-white because of my last name and non-hispanic because of my skin color. I was therefore neither…in my eyes and in theirs.
I would have this same view today if it I had not been “seized by the power of a great affection” with One who could see better than I could ever see on my own. The encounter was with my Lord and savior Jesus Christ and it was then that I learned that for me to get to a place where I could see and treat others like He would, I would first need the heart of God and the mind of Christ in order to do so. This would require that I remove myself from the equation because even my best intentions are tainted by my past prejudices.
So here we are, dealing once again with the same issues I dealt with as a kid. I wonder if this is not just another way that Jesus is trying to meet us on our own personal roads to Damascus… to teach us a new way to see, or even better said, a new way to see others. May it be so for all of us who sing those precious words, “I once was blind but now I see”.
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