THERE IS NO TALKING ABOUT BLACK TRUTH WITHOUT WADING DEEP INTO THE REALITIES OF RACISM. FROM THE PERSISTENT STING OF MICROAGGRESSIONS TO THE GUT PUNCH OF HATE SPEECH, EACH SUBJECT HAS A UNIQUE - BUT SADLY FAMILIAR - STORY TO SHARE.
“When I experienced racism, for the first time, I believe that I was about 12 years old,” recalls Justin Gatlin. “It was an afterschool kind of daycare situation, so a lot of kids from different schools would meet at the YMCA. And one of the kids I played with a lot, his name is Jason—blonde-haired kid about the same height, same age but came from two different, two different lifestyles, two different family households. And we played all the time together after school. And then one day my basketball hit his basketball a couple times before we went in the room, and he just looked at me with anger and spouted out the word n****. And this— the kid that I played with every day, you know—my first instinct was to hit him. And I did.”
“Initially, I was in trouble, because obviously I hit him physically, and then, when I told the counselor, who was a white man, probably in his 30s, I told him exactly what Jason said to me. His face changed, you know, he looked with such seriousness on his face, like, ‘Okay, you go back to class.’”
“It taught me the meaning of boundaries at a young age. Because Jason was still my friend, we still played with each other after that incident, because we were kids, we didn’t know any better. It never came up again, but it always stuck with me to know that: There is always that line—you’re always going to be different because of the color of your skin, and they have words for you that they may not use to your face. Sadly, it prepared me at a young age to realize that.”
WATCH JUSTIN GATLIN’S FULL BLACK TRUTH PROJECT VIDEO HERE. (coming soon)
For George McCalman the experience came later in life, while he was working his way up the ladder at a national magazine. “As a junior designer at a magazine, I was the recipient of direct institutional racism. And it resulted in someone being fired for sending me a racist letter. And it was my first shock. I knew about racism theoretically., I had experienced it in a kind of casual, everyday way that we all do, but it was the first time that it had been so pronounced—that it was so obvious, that the person actually ended up being fired. And so seeing the direct result of that direct form of racism, it just rescrambled my DNA. It was just a shock and a wake up.”
WATCH GEORGE McCALMAN’S FULL BLACK TRUTH PROJECT VIDEO HERE.
For Peter Limata, much of the racism he encounters often comes with a twist—once someone hears his accent, he gets to watch their stereotypes shift right before his eyes. “I was at the train station—you know when you run out of money on your ticket, you have to go out of the platform, fill it up, and then come back—I was doing that with the permission of the ticket agent. And all of a sudden, this police officer walks up to me thinking I was skipping out on payment. It never even crossed my mind, because in my head, I was just walking out [to fill my ticket].”
“So they’re standing right beside me as I’m filling up my ticket, and I look around, I was like, ‘Can I help you?’ And I’m trying to be as polite as possible. And the police officer’s like, ‘Well, you didn’t pay your ticket.’ As I started to explain, I saw his whole demeanor change, and which was such a moment for me… Immediately, he started talking about where I was from and what I was doing. And all of a sudden, it seemed to him that I was a person that was not threatening.”
He has come to understand that his voice is a privilege. “I’m constantly learning and realizing that somebody out there does not have that to their advantage. It was just such a moment for me to realize how much other fellow Black men go through. And it was just… wow. That was a moment for me. To think somebody, even when you’re just honestly doing something, you’re a trigger for somebody, you’re a moving target.”
Some experiences with friends and co-workers have looked very different, but affected him just as deeply. “I was with a co-worker and we’re talking about being worried about the jobs being cut in education. They were like, ‘Oh, don’t worry. You’re Black and you’re male. You’ll be fine.’”
He was taken off guard and responded that he hoped the reason he would keep his job was “because I'm good at it. Or at least I bring something to it other than just my race and gender. It was one of those times—you start to realize that happens to many people in many different fields. They get that rap: If you're a person of color, you're a woman… well, you’re just there to fill out the quota. You’re not worthy. Those are things that I’ve had to really fight. I try to push back a lot. Sometimes I get pretty angry about it and I have to check myself.”
Dr. Aisha Mays distinctly remembers her first experience with racism that she was consciously aware of. “I think that being consciously aware of racism is a really important thing, because as a Black person growing up in the United States, we are faced with racism from the time we are very small. Probably from before we can even talk or even have language around what that is. And if we are not protected or in spaces where we are continuously validated, that can erode the spirit very early on without even conscious knowledge of what that is.”
Because she spent much of her childhood living in primarily Black communities, it wasn’t until she moved to Silicon Valley in high school that she vividly recalls racism playing a part in her daily life.
“I’ve always had a really strong personality and kind of knew what I wanted to do, and would say that. And so I remember wanting to be in honors classes in high school… And I remember asking the vice principal—because I was new to the city, new to this school—that I wanted to be in an honors English class. And I remember her asking me, ‘Well, how do you know you can do that?’ And I was shocked by that question because I had been in honors classes in elementary school and middle school, and there was never a question about my ability or why I thought I could do something. And so I had to go through a series of tests in order to be placed into this honors class—even having come from an honors English class in middle school. There were just so many questions about my ability. I did end up being in the honors class, and in the class I was the only Black girl in the classroom.”
This made her think about all the other Black kids—where were they? Why was she alone? “And I noticed that a lot of the Black students were being placed in the special education classes with the one Black teacher in the school. That seemed odd to me. I knew that maybe some Black students need to be in special education, but certainly not all of them.”
And her experience as this lone Black student in the honors program led to her encountering another form of racism: tokenism. “As a Black student who was very vocal and kind of knew what I wanted to do, I then became kind-of the tokenized Black girl. It was like, ‘Well, Aisha can run for this office and then we’ll have one Black girl in the student government.’”
A particularly upsetting experience following the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles—another widely broadcast video of police brutality that briefly shook the white community out of its peaceful oblivion. “I was in high school at the time. And I remember the day after it happened, the principal called me into his office and said, ‘We’re going to have an assembly today, and I think you should speak.’ And I remember thinking, I’m a junior in high school, why am I speaking at this assembly for the Rodney King beating? I’m also a Black person—why am I the one who has to speak to all the student body to talk about what happened? And I remember asking him, ‘Why am I being asked to do this?’ ‘Oh, well, the students will listen to you.’ That’s tokenism. That is a form of racism. And I didn’t understand it at the time. I did feel very upset and bothered by that. I still did it, but I felt really bothered that I was asked to do that and asked to represent all of the Black students in my school who were going through this, as I was, and that our principal wouldn’t take the lead.”
