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Cynthia Phillips, Where Are You? I Still Want To Be Friends
A missed opportunity for friendship means less love in the world
A sheltered, geeky life
Decades ago, I knew a beautiful Black girl who attended elementary school with me. I grew up in rural Washington state. There were almost no Black people in the area. Cynthia was the only one I ever met, or spoke to. They were truly rare. I don’t remember any others at our school until Junior High.
My family was middle class white, and big. My dad was in the military and my mom was a school teacher. We were, I guess, “colorblind”, a word that then meant tolerant. Today, we know that word just means something more akin to “clueless.”
In my home, we revered Martin Luther King. We were not allowed to judge people. We were taught to always regard others with respect. To this day, in the area where I grew up, I never heard the N-word spoken, by anyone. It would have been shocking, and frightening, if I had. We were taught that the N-word is more hideous than the C-word hurled at a female. And there was plenty of other derogatory names, which although terrible to be thrown around, I heard many times, especially around my military brothers and dad.
The sad truth is where I grew up, I learned almost nothing about the lived experience of being…