This incident happened 20 years ago, but it has haunted me ever since. I have wanted to share this story, but not known how or with who, or even exactly why it has seemed so important to me. This experience completely changed my own perspective of what it must be like to a POC, specifically a child of color, growing up in America.
In 1997 I was a 4th grade teacher at John Adams Elementary School in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This was an “inner-city” school in a conservative town that really didn’t have an inner-city, but it surely did have low-income neighborhoods. Adams Elementary was composed of mostly very poor, non-white students and lacked many of the resources and materials that other schools (even within the same district) took for granted: art teachers, globes, current text books, etc. It was a constant struggle to meet even the most basic needs of my students.
In April of that year, a tragedy struck when half the school burned down. The fire left the 3 fourth grades without classrooms, destroyed the library, the computer lab, the Head Start room and the ESL classroom. We literally held our classes on the playground and gave the very first Standards Based State Tests to our students in the gym in dim light while the students sat crowded around lunch tables. We had no text books or supplies whatsoever for several weeks until other schools donated some of their extras.
As part of our Colorado Unit in social studies, I had put together a major field trip to the Royal Gorge for which we had been fund-raising all year. We had also considered taking the Cog Railway up Pikes Peak, but the cost was insurmountable. After our plight became public, some organization (sorry, I don’t remember which) donated tickets for all three classes and teachers to spend an afternoon taking school buses to Manitou Springs and riding the Railway to the top of Pikes Peak. We were so grateful not to have to spend another day on the pavement or in the gym.
So we loaded up our 80+ kids, a few extra teachers, a few parents, our lunches, and off we went. I clearly remember that morning as being the first time some of my students had laughed and acted like carefree children since before the fire. It was a beautiful sunny, spring day.
When we got to the base of the mountain, the kids ate their lunches and began to mill around the buses and the parking area. I admit to being completely unaware of how “dark” the group looked - I’d been teaching at that school for six years and all my students looked like my own children to me. But Colorado Springs is a very conservative, Christian city, and even back then, its dark underbelly was kept largely hidden, hardly even known, except as it related to “crime.” Still, these were 9 and 10 year-olds. How threatening could they be?
As the leader of the group, it was up to me to go change our pre-purchased tickets for actual boarding passes in the “depot.” We had just done a final head count and I realized we had 4 or 5 extra tickets. I took two of my students by the hand (they were all quite clingy following the trauma of the fire) and went into the ticket office. There were two ticket windows open and short lines behind each. Apparently there was a little kerfuffle going on because they were getting low on tickets and some of the customers hadn’t yet gotten theirs. One man in particular was blowing some steam and becoming quite agitated. He was at the end of the line next to where I was standing with my two students. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to him, but I could see that he was in his late 60s, dressed very touristy, white, and angry. I thought it would be helpful if I could let the attendants know that I actually had some tickets to return before they started turning people away. So I held up my extra tickets and tried to call out politely across the 2 or 3 people in front of me.
Suddenly this man turned and stepped toward me, raging. “How dare you!” he screamed. He couldn’t get the words out fast enough. His face was red with fury. “You...You ape!”
I think he said something else about my being rude, but I couldn’t hear past those first words. Of course, as a blond, white woman I had never been called an ape before. Of course, as a person just going about my business, trying to be courteous, I was totally unprepared for his attack. In ten seconds I was reduced to a child, completely taken by surprise.
Somehow I bumbled around, ignoring the man while physically backing away from him, everyone staring. Somehow we found ourselves back behind the wall separating the counter from the back office as I offered up our extra tickets. The youngish attendant mumbled apologies, I think he was quite stunned, as well.
I was still shaking as we rejoined our group. There were so many students and they were so excited, there was so much to focus on, but I couldn’t get that man’s rage out of my head. I mentioned it to one of my teammates, “This man just called me an ape…” She brushed it off. It really was silly. But I was traumatized. I’m still traumatized, twenty years later. Because for that one minute, I knew what it was like to be black. That man saw me as black and he treated me as black. He saw me as one of my beautiful, loving, dark students. And his reaction was the one of the most horrible things I have ever glimpsed.
Years have passed, I have continued to learn and grow, but I have never forgotten that moment or that day. I have thought often about the two students who were standing with me in that ticket office, and wondered how many times since then they have been judged and treated as something less than human. I have been angry with myself at how I crumpled and ran and fell into my own fear rather than standing up strong and facing him down, and most of all, angry at myself for not attending first to those two kids who had to hear that, hoping and praying that they thought it was about me and not them.
I have learned about PTSD and its triggers and how it plays out years later when people re-experience similar situations. I have come to realize that that is exactly what happened to me that day, as an adult survivor of long-term, childhood sexual abuse. I was reduced to a helpless, terrified child who had no power over a man who thought he could step not around or over me, but on me. And it has made me wonder, is growing up black in this country a trauma in itself? How could it not be? This happened to me ONCE, when I was nearly 40, and I was literally holding all the cards. I still feel cold and sick inside when I think of that man approaching us. But my students were children.
What must it be like for black and brown children to grow up in a country where they see, month after month, year after year, police officers exonerated after killing unarmed black boys and men? What must it feel like to see the first black president hanged in effigy and depicted in posters as Hitler and the Joker? What must they feel now, when the new president’s first response to a White Supremacist / Nazi Rally leading to death and violence is “both sides are to blame”? And that is speaking of the present day — I shudder to think of what it must have been like for black boys and girls over the past centuries…
Racism is a sickness. Like polio and the measles. It must be eradicated. Its destruction and devastation goes far beyond what the naked eye can see. It kills not just the souls of its victims, it kills the souls of the racists as well.
My evidence? The angry, old white man got his ticket to board the Cog Railway. He huffed and puffed and was beside himself when it turned out he was going to have to sit in the same car as all those black and brown kids. He could hardly bring himself to sit down. He sat in the very front row and I made myself sit right behind him, which was horrible for me, but instinctively, I knew I needed to provide a “barrier” between him and my students. He worked himself into such a tizzy that by the time we got to the top of Pikes Peak, he needed oxygen. He thought he was having a heart attack and couldn’t even leave the first aide area. I don’t know if he lived or died, I wish I could say I cared. But what a pity he missed the beautiful scenery that day, inside the Cog, and out.