Growing up it took awhile for me to really see color. I mean I noticed it, but it wasn’t a big deal to me. A little girl in the hood, I thought everybody was just like me; we all had mamas, we all took the bus (207 and 218), we all ate off of food stamps (the color paper not the card labeled by three letters), we all lived in the hood. You get it. The differences that I saw were hair and money and, well, hell, money wasn’t a worry of mine. Where I grew up (both neighborhoods) was nothing but Black African Americans and Mexicans/Hispanics. We saw white people on tv and a billboard here or there. Again, didn’t mean anything. They were soo far away. Only not really we just didn’t see them often in our everyday lives. I assumed they all lived in the valley, which I didn’t think had a hood and they all had money and cars. My mother and other adults and kids around me always told me how pretty I looked and how beautiful I was. Even when I encountered people of other races and complexions I was complimented. You couldn’t tell me anything. I KNEW I was beautiful and maybe even conceited back then. I saw how light skin and white girls were everywhere on tv, but in my household and my neighbors there were pictures of beautiful, royal black folks all around. TV was just tv which I put in the categories of movies meaning not real just for show.

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