skin

I'm 23 now, but when I was a little boy I used to think that black people were black because they got too much sun tan.

Anon

I didn't know a lot of black people as a kid, but somehow I got the impression they were composed, at least in some part by chocolate. When I was about 4, I turned a corner in the library and there was a tell black man. I blurted out with delight, "hi chocolate face!!!" My mother was mortified. The guy just laughed.

holly

I used to think that when my mom said "Bare skin" she meant "hair as a bear" skin.

Smart Cookie

It's not so much that I used to believe, but I used to imagine that when I had an itchy back, the itch itself was like those covered wagons you see in cowboy movies, and that the hand that scratched the itch was like Indians, and my back was the prairie that the Indians chased the covered wagons over!

Kirstenie

I used to think black people were black because their ancestors in Africa turned black because it was so hot there.

Anon

When I was little, I thought that because my mom used Oil of Olay lotion on her skin to get rid of her wrinkles, that that meant she was going to die. In reality, she was 27 years old. What was I thinking??

Samantha Kennedy

I used to believe that kids with dark skin were just extra dirty and needed to be scrubbed better.

Anon

When I was very little I thought that tattoos were blue dots and everyone had one, like a birthmark. As a teenager my mother attempted to give herself a homemade tattoo. My grandmother caught her before she was able to do more than a little blue dot on her thigh. As a result of my belief I would go around asking people where their tattoos are.

John

I used to believe that if I touched a black person the color would rub off on me.

Sande

When I was really young, perhaps 3 or 4, I believed that black people were called brown (people) instead because they looked more brown to me than black.

RJ

The first time I saw a black guy I asked my mom why he looked like that, was it because he got burnt?

Lee

When I was a little girl we had a dark skinned girl in our school who was unbelievably cool. I really admired her and wanted to be like here. I would always pray every night and ask God if he could make me more like her. When that summer I got a lot of freckles I went into this happy tantrum thinking I was turning into my heroin...

N.W.,the Netherlands

i used to believe that when i had an itch or a tickle, it was because there were ants crawling beneath my skin

Willa

Growing up in the rural South there was a great deal of rascism. My mom told my sister that if she ate the pecans that still had the green out shell, they would make her turn into an african-american. Defiantly my sis kept playing with the green pecans from the big tree. That night, when she went to take her bath, the oils from the pecans and the water had a chemical reaction and her skin started turning brownish. In the midst of blood curling screams my mom ran to the bathroom to see what was wrong and there sat my sis hysterically covered in tears in the tub with black fingers. She never ate pecans again.

JRG

I believed that all people were cooked in an oven, by god, as babies. White people were cooked less than black people. I was about 4 and with my mom in a predominately black area when I said to her "god must have left him in the oven a really long time" after seeing a very dark skinned man. After some talking she figured out what my theory was and corrected me. Boy did she have a laugh!

Trish

When I was younger I didn't think black people got spots. I wanted to be black, I think believed this until I was about 12!

Barbara

When I was in kindergarten, living in a very white suburb outside of Seattle, there was only one black child in my grade. When we had our only full day (where the am kids and pm kids went all day together), I saw her. During lunch time, when we were all eating our sandwiches, she was the only one with wheat bread, and I thought she had brown bread because she had brown skin. Later on in school, she became one of my best friends... and now I won't even touch white bread. :)

taliba