I grew up in the south and my Grampa, Gramma, and Dad were/are highly racist against black people. For the most part as a child, that was kept hidden from me. Either that or I didn’t notice it. Looking back, I can pick out a few things. Whenever I mentioned a friend from school, my Gramma would ask “Is she black?” and I was always told never to go to a certain gas station because it was the black one.

My mom was the opposite though. She had a lot of black and white friends and once said that when it came to skin color, she was color blind.

I was always like her.

About a year ago I read Barack Obama’s book “Dreams from my Father.” I don’t know why, but that changed things for me. For anyone that doesn’t know the background: His mom was a white woman from Kansas and his dad a black man from Kenya. He was raised in a white family and only met his father once. But he was considered black by whites and considered not black enough by blacks. After I read that book, I started noticing black people more. I had always known they were there and treated them the same. But now they started standing out more. I was no longer racially color blind like my mom. I made an effort to always smile at them. But it kept resounding in my mind that that was wrong because I was treating them differently because of their skin color. I was nicer to them, but it still was being prejudiced in a way because it was because of their color.

I haven’t been able to shake it.

Gradually that effortful niceness faded and I went back to everyone treated the same: with my nonchalance (I tend to stay in a bubble if I don’t know someone; “ignoring” most everyone and just doing what I’m there to do). But they still stood out.

Last week when I went up to my Gramma’s, I got gas before getting on the highway to come home. There are two gas stations across the road from each other. One is the one I’ve always gone to and the other is the one I’ve was told never to go to. I was talking to Effie on my phone while pulling in and the “white” one was all full and I had to circle. I told her about that I was told never to go to the other one because it was “black” and that I didn’t know why but I couldn’t let myself go there since it had been ingrained in me for so long even though all the pumps there were fully open. I have nothing against black people, but I couldn’t go there because I had been told my whole life never to go there, even though there probably never was a reason for them telling me that other than the fact that mostly only blacks went there.

But why is that? The “black” station always has gas a few cents cheaper so the blacks have probably always gone there for that reason, using common sense. But then the whites saw all the blacks going there and “banned” it, even if it meant paying a little more for their gas.

While at my Gramma’s, my 89-year old great aunt Sadie told me about this boy that came to her door in the middle of the night asking to use her phone. Immediately, I thought of the risk: he could have been there to kill or rob her and instinctively knew that I would have refused. She said that he said he had broken down and wanted to call his dad to come get him. She said he had puppies by his feet, that he said he had just gotten them. That was the night that it went down to 17 degrees.

She let him in. He couldnt’ get through to his dad so she got the number from him and said she would continue to call and he continued walking into town. After a while, she got through and explained what had happened. They returned the day after for the car and his dad came and thanked her.

Last night on the way home from class, I started craving some milk and went in a gas station where I live (the others were up by my Gramma’s) to get a small bottle. When I pulled in, there were only two parking spots alotted for non-getting-gas people and right next to them was a picnic bench where a black man was sitting. He had a hoodie on and the hood was pulled over his head. And my first instinct was to try to find another place to park because that image of a black man with a hood, just sitting and waiting for a victim has been ingrained in my head recently by my dad.

But I told myself no. I asked myself why I was afraid because I had never met this man before and how did I know he would kill me? I reminded myself of Aunt Sadie. So I parked, got out, and smiled at him and said hi. He smiled real big back at me. I went in, got my milk, came out and told him to have a good night. He said thank you, that I should too. I got in my car and drove home.

So I made myself a promise. That from now on, even if my first instinct is to stay away, that I’m not going to continue what some in my family passed onto me. If I cross someone’s path, I will smile at them–whether they are black, white, or something else. Skin color doesn’t matter and everyone is an individual person who could use a smile.

Maybe one day a little black boy will cross my path and see a white woman who isn’t afraid of him, isn’t trying to stay away, and is nice to him. And he’ll think to himself that maybe his parents are wrong too and that not all white people think he isn’t as good.

Of course, I might really cross paths with someone who is bad someday. And maybe it will get me killed. But I think being nice to someone will get me a higher chance of them skipping over me to the next than if I tried to stay away. And if it does get me killed someday, at least I’m not perpetuating the cycle.

It’s better than living in perpetual fear that that person that looks a little different could hurt you or that the person knocking on your door in the middle of the night might be there for something else other than using your phone. We’ve got to give people the benefit of the doubt. We can’t always just assume they are bad and shut ourselves off. If we do, the world is only going to get more and more of those people. People are innocent until proven guilty, right?

I want to go back to being color blind and I’m going to do my best to achieve that. With one difference from the past: kindness rather than nonchalance.