Written by 7th Grade Joseph

My name is Joseph. I’m twelve years old, but I didn’t really understand racism until I was about nine. I know everybody always says, “Oh, I’ve always known about racism since forever,” but until some instances happened, I never really wrapped my mind around the concept of racism. Yeah, I always knew it was a thing, but I never really asked my parents, “Mom, Dad, what is racism?” Right after George Floyd died, my parents took me to the Lee Monument. It had all these pictures of Black people who died from either gun violence or police brutality. That was when I really found out about racism.

The first time I heard about racism was in first grade. In February my class started to learn about slavery. When I first learned about it, I was really angry. I had just found out that my ancestors could’ve been owned by my best friend’s ancestors (he was white, I was Black). I went home that day and told my parents about what happened in class. They told me that I shouldn’t be angry or mad about it, and I shouldn’t stop being friends with him. They said that it wasn’t his fault that it happened. They educated me on why it happened. They said that a long time ago, Europeans came to Africa and took a lot of the people who lived there because the color of their skin was different. They said that they took the people because they needed people to help them make their money. They took them to America and to a slave auction. That’s where the people would sell the people for money.

During Covid and quarantine I watched this show on Netflix called Family Reunion. It was about this football player who lived with his family in Seattle who went down to a family reunion. When he went down to the family reunion in Georgia, he loved being home so much that he decided to stay. In the first season his kids were mowing other people’s lawns, and when they tried to get back into their house, they got arrested because people thought they were trying to break in. This was another time that helped my understanding of racism. I asked my mom because I was watching the show with her.

I said, “Mom, why would they do that if it’s their house?”

She said that it’s because they got stereotyped.

I said, “What’s a stereotype?”

She replied that it’s a made-up thing that people say about types of people who are different from them.

I said, “It’s like saying that girls can’t play basketball.”

She said, “Yeah basically and there are other types of stereotypes. In this situation it was racial.”

I said, “Oh that’s not really nice to do to someone.”

She said, “It isn’t but it still happens in real life.”

I realized that in that situation in the show the cops were being racist and that they stereotyped the kids because they were Black and thought they were trying to break into the house.

At the end of that episode I asked my mom why people are racist she said, “You know Joseph, I don’t know why some people are like that.”

Back to George Floyd. This was in 2020 and I was so sad. I went to the Lee Monument, and I saw all of the people who died from racism and police brutality. I was crying. I saw all of them and thought, “Why would somebody do this?” I was then realizing that all of this was due to racism. The police officers killed somebody for nothing because they suspected the Black people were getting a gun, which is a stereotype. I saw these posters, and I realized that racism is terrible. I was so mad I was raging like a storm and my tears came out roaring like a flood. I felt scared just to do anything semi-bad and end up like them.