I am white.

I was born that way.

I was also born with crossed eyes and curly hair to a poor momma and daddy in northeast Oklahoma City.

I didn’t know we were poor because everyone around us was poor, but I knew I was different.

I was the girl who wore Coke-bottle thick glasses. Kids laughed and called me Four Eyes, but that wasn’t the first time I’d been called ugly names.

I was about eight years old when Momma and I rode the bus downtown one Saturday to see “The Robe.”

I remember we ate at Green’s then I think went around the corner to the theatre. It was exciting, although we didn’t get any popcorn, and we were both tired after our long day.

I think we caught a bus right away, but there were no seats up front so we walked back until we found a seat in the Coloreds Only section.

I sat on Momma’s lap since there was only one seat, and a nice lady next to me complimented my dress. I told her, “My momma made it,” and she and Momma talked.

I remember that we got off the bus at the rear exit, and I was happy not have to sit anymore. Then I heard a man’s angry voice yell from the bus: “Nigger lovers!”

I didn’t understand.

I’d never heard that word before.

I think Momma said something about an “ignorant” man, then overheard her telling Daddy about it and found out that was a bad name for negroes.

I also remember a few years later when Momma and me sat on the stools at Green’s lunch counter, then gave up our seats for another lady and her daughter. The waitress was angry. She used that ugly word that I’d heard frequently by then, and Momma stared her down said, “This woman just wants to have lunch with her daughter the way we did.”

I suppose the only way I knew anything back then was eavesdropping, and heard Daddy tell Momma we were right in the middle of a Sit-In that afternoon and it was dangerous. “Be careful who you talk to, or who you’re friends with!”

I can plainly hear Momma say, “You mean like you and that old colored man at the junk store that you gave my grocery money to so he could buy his grandson eye glasses?”

I’m glad to have those memories. They’ve helped me be me.

I know what it’s like to have someone walk across the street from you because they hate you. And, have groups of church people come in my office and threaten me if we published something they didn’t like, get a call from a young man who said I’d kill his grandmother if we ran his DUI in the police report, and some have even taken my work out on my son.

I can’t know the struggles of being black.

Losing a son simply because of the color of his skin is impossible to imagine.

I’m white.

I’m proud and thankful for protesters who only want justice, and not war.

Same goes for law enforcement officers who have stepped up to remind us we’re all equal: “Red, brown, yellow, black or white. They are precious in His sight.”