When I first became aware of my ethnicity (by Tom Collins)

I think that my earliest recollection of someone being different from me is when an African-American family moved in next door to my grandparents. I think I was in kindergarten and one day I was climbing the tree in my grandparent’s front yard and the new girl from next door came over to say hello and to play. Her name was Keya. Keya had an older sister and I cannot remember her name, but she would come over from time to time to play. We would chase each other around the yard, climb the tree, play hide and go seek, find and catch role-policies and jump the cracks in the sidewalk order to not ‘break our mama’s back’. I knew that Keya didn’t look like me, but that didn’t matter what I do remember is my papa describing her family as a ‘nice Negro family’. I had no idea what a Negro was, but later I realized that that was another term for African-Americans and was actually an older P.C. term, thus my papa’s usage. I know that he wasn’t a racist and meant no harm in the statement, but this is my earliest recollection of someone of a different race than me being called or addressed as ‘different’.

I would never be the same.