A few weeks ago, we asked Race/Related readers to share their stories about the first time they encountered racism or a racist belief. We were overwhelmed by the responses, and would like to share some of them with you.

The story below comes to us from Baker C. Blanding, 31, a marketing manager who lives in Philadelphia. Mr. Blanding said he subscribed to Race/Related for “its coverage of topics relevant to me as a black man,” and for insight into the struggles of other marginalized groups.

His story has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

This isn’t the worst kind of story about racism, but I remember it vividly as it shows how foreign the idea of racism was to me as child.

I’m black and I grew up in Georgia, where I started kindergarten in 1992. I remember we sat in groups of four and I was one of a few black children in the class.

One day, a classmate’s father came to pick her up. To our surprise, he was black. We had all assumed that this particular student was white. I remember the puzzled looks on all of our faces.

Sometime later, we were working on an art project and in my group of four I asked to use a classmate’s crayons from their 64-piece set. I had the 8- or 16-piece set at best. They said “no.”

I asked why not since we were learning about sharing at that time. I remember the answer being “because you’re black.”

That made no sense to me. I didn’t think of it as racist; it was just a bad reason in my five-year-old mind. Something like “because you’re a stinky face” would have been more acceptable.

I tried to reason with my classmate: “But her father is black, too, and you’re sharing with her!”

No dice.

I reported all of this to the teacher, but she was of no help. I felt like I was in “The Twilight Zone,” and everyone else was in on this stupid joke but me.

I told my parents about what happened and I have no idea exactly what came of the situation. The teacher wasn’t fired, but I also never experienced something like that at the school ever again.

The whole episode feels like an isolated incident in my childhood.

— Baker C. Blanding

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Lauretta Charlton is an editor on the National Desk and the editor of the Race/Related newsletter. She was previously a news editor at The New Yorker and a music columnist at New York magazine. @laurettaland

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