Separate But Equal

1963. So here I am, eleven years old. I go to school where I pledge allegiance and sing songs that praise my country and extol its virtues. But what am I becoming? I believe in the land of the free and the home of the brave, with liberty and justice for all. I believe that any one can grow up to be president, and that America is the greatest country in the world. I’m a red-white-and-blue, Yankee doodle dandy, dyed-in-the-wool, true-blue American. Yes sir, that’s me. But.....
I’m being molded. Despite all my beliefs in America and to the flag and all that, I’ve learned how to hate. It’s imperceptible, but it’s there, and if it’s not downright hate, it’s fear. Fear of anyone different from me. Especially black people. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not like what’s going on down south. There are no “colored only” signs, and black and white kids go to school together in Woodbury and Deptford, and they can sit at the counter in Woolworth’s. I ride the bus to Woodbury and sit next to black kids my own age, and no one beats me for it.
Things are changing. This summer you would find black kids fishing at our lake, standing right beside me and my friend Keith. They would tag along with us as we went rake fishing along the banks and share in our harvest of turtles and such. The Jericho Baptist Church would still have its baptisms in the waters of our lake as well, but there are no black people swimming or lying on our beach.
I’m taught to believe that everyone is equal, and yet I can ignore our “colored” neighbors across the street, the house where my very first friend and playmate Lulu once lived, she herself a little “colored” girl.
It bothers me sometimes. I don’t truly understand the why. It’s not like I’m some eleven year old philosopher or something. My classmates and I don’t discuss racial matters on the playground at school, heck, we barely talk to the girls in our class. It’s just that that song from Sunday school still resonates in my brain: “Jesus loves the little children....be they yellow, black or white...” I can’t make sense of it.
I’m being molded. I and everyone else here in Woodbury Heights. Taught by parents and grandparents and friends and relatives who still carry the old fears and ideas of the past. Our mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, older cousins and our neighbors clutter up their minds in fear and mistrust, and no one can say why. They carry their thoughts and fears on their sleeves, but it is getting diluted. It’s in my back pocket. I don’t always feel it, but it’s there.
I don’t like this hating thing.
I know it’s not right, but it’s there.
I didn’t learn it in school, it’s what the “real world” taught me, and I see it on TV.
I don’t like this hating thing.

Will it always be with me?