Me against the world

Childhood

Kindergarten

"Why is your skin so dark?", was one of the things kids often asked me when I was in kindergarten. "Because I'm from Senegal!", was usually my answer. I was always wondering why they would ask that question. For me, having a dark skin was normal, but for the others it wasn't. I was the only black child in the kindergarten and obviously stood out. I soon found friends there and never had problems with other kids. But they always made sure to remind me, that I was "different". A typical thing was when we were painting and one kid asked:"Can you give me the Skin colour?" Even I picked up that bad habit until my parents told me that the colour is beige and up to this point I never really thought about it. Someday the other kids were trying to bully me. They said things like: "Your skin Colour looks like poo-poo" or "Don't you wash yourself?" When they said something like that to me I went to the kindergarten teacher and since then it got less. But with new children joining the kindergarten it was inevitable to not get stupid comments like these. Even though I was young, I noticed that this wasn't right. At that time of course, I didn't knew the word racism so I couldn't categorize it and I couldn't fully understand why other Kids were saying things like that. All I knew was that it was mean and wrong in special way.

 I'm almost 100% sure that every black parent has that specific conversation with their kids at some point. When I was 5 or 6 years old and about to go to elementary School, I had that conversation with my parents. In that conversation, they explained me what racism was and that was probably the first time I heard that word. They had to explain me that People are going to be mean and racist against me just because of the colour of my skin. They had to explain me that people will treat me differently just because I'm black or senegalese. They gave me examples of what happened to them and what to do if someone was racist. They made sure that I was always proud to be black and I should never let someone else drag me down. When I was in the bus with my mom for example, I noticed how people would stare at us, especialy kids. At that time, I felt uncomfortable, but I always remembered what my parents told me.

Elementary school

Elementary school was an important stage of my life. I've met new friends and there were so many more children. But still I was one of the few black kids there and it didn't take long until stupid questions or commments started again. This time I was used to it and I knew how to handle this. Yet, there was one time that completely surprised me. There was that random boy from my grade who just called me "chocolate face" out of nowhere. I'm still surprised by my quick reaction calling him "vanille face". He quickly noticed that he couldn't bully me with that and left me alone. In P.E. we used play that game called "Who's scared from the black man". Also back then, I recognized that the black man was being portrayed as something "bad" so I told my parents about that and they wrote a letter to principal. Since then the game was called "Who's scared by the chimney sweeper". 

I can always be glad that I wasn't faced with racism every day, but I was always confronted with stereotypes. Since I'm from Senegal (West Africa), people always thought I was poor and if they didn't think that, then they had that typical picture of little kids starving there and the people living in lodges with straw as the roof. When I was in third grade, I showed my class pictures from Senegal. I remember how some of my classmates were sure that I would embarrass myself, but I didn't. I remember how I completly blew their mind and even those of the teachers! That made me wonder what the hell are their parents always telling them about africa?!? 

But from all the previous moments, the following one is the peak of my childhood.

When I was in fourth grade, I was in a really cool extracurricular activity called "Geo-caching", which was in cooperation with another school. The only difference was that they were teenagers. I never really had problems with them, sometimes they weren't behaving well or they were disturbing the EA, but that was about it. But then there was that one day, when someone of them was in a pretty bad mood and when I asked him politely if he could behave, so we could go on, he snapped. He was yelling so loud at me, saying: "Who the hell do you think you are you dirty n*gger" Go back to your jungle where you belong!". The teachers immediately stopped him and penalized him, but I was just starring at him. This was the only time I was so defenseless. I was so shocked that I stayed quiet and this was the first time that I was truly sad. I remember how my friend tried to cheer me up, but I was so hurt. This was the only time that someone draged me down. And I promised myself that I would NEVER let this happen to me again!