PREJUDICE

san francisco, ca to durham, nc.
right before i entered fourth grade, the teachers were involved in a nasty strike about layoffs, so school didn’t begin when it was supposed to. mom’s friend pam (the same one from SMOG) was going to visit some friends in north carolina and offered to take me with her. six weeks after the strike began, it ended - the day i was heading off to durham. i still got to go but i had to agree to the dreaded home schooling.
having grown up in between the mission district (mainly latino) and the castro (mainly gay) in san francisco, i had a pretty generous idea of what constituted ‘normal’. in north carolina i got my first introduction to prejudice. pam was continually being harassed (i was never entirely sure if it was because she was a lesbian, a feminist or that she looked like a radical hippy, but we got yanked into the back rooms of several stores and made to wait for security and cops - we were always allowed to leave eventually, but the hassle was very tense and sometimes downright scary) but, more impressively, the greensboro massacre happened while we were there. pam’s friends knew people who were killed so it was discussed openly. i learned about the kkk. i learned about the socialist movement. i wore a black arm band in solidarity with the victims. i was more than ready to go back home to where you could be different and not get killed for it.
on a happier note, i learned how to ride a bike there and i’ve never forgotten the skill.