I grew up in a small Texas town where I could tell a good lie and a bad one at the same time.
I could say something like, “My grandma says the moon is black.”
I could even say something along the lines of, “I think my dad was a black guy.”
But when I went to college, I found myself with a white girlfriend.
And then I went back to my hometown and said, “Wait a minute.
What was that I said about my grandma saying the moon was black?”
I went on Twitter and people were like, ‘I’m a fucking racist.’
So I thought, OK, maybe I am, but I’m also a fucking idiot.
And so I decided to try to understand how this weird, weird, white supremacist movement had come to be.
I went online and I was like, OK.
This is the most important thing to understand about this crazy thing that happened to me in my early 20s.
So I decided, OK well, I’ll go out and try to figure it out.
So my first day of college, we went to a campus event called the College Republicans.
They’re like, Oh, we’re going to be at a fraternity house.
And I thought I was a bit naive.
I thought it would be just a bunch of guys in blackface and the usual stuff.
So we went.
I was wearing my college T-shirt.
And it was just really hot.
And we were all in there.
And the guys were all like, You guys look like the most boring, dull, and dull fraternity.
And there were people in frat houses, right?
And I’m like, What?
It was just this really boring thing.
And they just kept going on about how cool I was and how cool it was to be in a fraternity.
So that was my first thought: Wow, this is weird.
And at that moment, I’m the most racist person I’ve ever been in my entire life.
And my first response was, I think my first reaction was, Why?
Because I am not a racist.
And that was a really bad first reaction.
It wasn’t until I was in college and I had a black boyfriend that I realized I was not a white supremacist.
It was when I was at a university party that I was confronted by a bunch who were just saying, Oh we’re white supremacists.
And because I’m a white person, they were saying the exact same thing.
So then I realized, Oh wow, it’s not just a college thing.
This has been happening to me for so long that I didn’t realize it.
It’s been happening all over the place, and I’m just the most ignorant person I know.
And a lot of the time, I just think, Well, if I can get over this stupid thing that I’m doing, then I can do anything.
And if that’s not going to work, I might as well not try to.
And what is the first thing that you try to do to try and get over it?
And this was actually the first time that I started to get my shit together and realize that this is not going away.
So this was probably my worst moment.
So what is your biggest fear when you’re being told that you’re a racist?
And the biggest fear that you have, it goes in a really different direction than when you were a white girl.
It goes a little bit in the opposite direction.
So your biggest fears are, Is this going to hurt me?
And is this going a little further?
Because what I was afraid of was, Is I going to have to take this on?
Is this something I’m going to get caught up in?
And what I found out was, No, I was just going to take it on and go for it.
And even when I started talking to some of my friends and saying, OK I’m gonna go after it, some of them were like: OK.
You’re crazy.
You should just shut up.
I mean, you’re just trying to take the pain.
And this is why it’s so difficult for me, and why it made me feel like a fool.
But when you have a partner in crime, you know, it doesn’t matter.
They can say, What if I tell you that I lied?
And then you’re like oh, no, you’ve got to take my word for it, right, because you’ve actually done something that is wrong.
So you can’t be mad.
You can’t cry.
And you have to be ready for the consequences of your actions.
But also, you can have a conversation about how it was that this happened.
And some of the other things that we do have to deal with.
Like, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that white people in America are dying at a much higher rate than black people.
It really is.
And when you
