skin

When I was little, I watched Reading Rainbow ALL THE TIME. I also lived a very sheltered life, our neighborhood being comprised entirely of retirement-aged white people. Since Lavar Burton was the only black person I'd really ever seen, I thought that all black people looked like him. I couldn't figure out how they were able to tell each other apart.

Sarah

For a cultural day of some sort, someone cut out silhouettes of people from different coloured papers. I understood the tan and white ones (some people were albino) but then there were bright yellow ones, blue, orange, green, and purple ones. I got scared for some reason that the purple and blue people in the world were gong to take and skin me because they want to be normal. I was always scraping my knees and getting blisters on my palms so that they wouldnt want my skin. And I don't even want my skin anymore, I'm so scarred up from those misled years.

britishbroccoli

I used to think that African Americans were made out of chocolate

Holly

When I was 3-4 yrs old i would stay in the bathroom for hours and wash my hands, i belived if i´d wash them long enough they would shine like a silk glove..

Silja

I used to think "birthmarks" or "beauty marks" were just a polite term for cancer, and if I looked at someone with a birthmark, I would catch cancer and get very sick and die

Anon

My Mother told me that if you get a Tatoo your skin will fall off.

BoBo

I only know this because my parents told me, but when I was really tiny, I thought skin color was a result of cleanliness. We lived in an all-white town for some reason, and the first time I saw an African-American, I told my mother (loudly), "That lady's all dirty." My mother was not thrilled.

helen

I have a light brown birthmark on the outside of my left calf. For years I was convinced that was where my mother spilled coffee on me when I was a baby.

Texas granny

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

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

Anon

when i was young i thot if u got a mole u would turn to 1. win i saw my mole on my shoulder i was terifyed.i got scared also because my hair was still growing from win i gotit cut, i thot it was xtra hair gowing!

:( poor misledbabi

I used to think that people with freckles were smarter than people who didn't. Since i had freckles, i thought i was smarter than my other friends

Marcia

I once watched a video on youtube where a man slices his knee on a sharp rock and he gets a deep gash in his knee, when i was 5, and I was scared that if i got a deep gash in my knee, and I would die slowly since blood comes out

Anon

I used to believe my father was a different race than I am. I am caucasian, and I'm very fair-skinned. My father works outdoors, so he has a year-round "farmer tan" on his arms and face. I thought he was LITERALLY HALF African American.

Amanda

i used to believe that if you drew a colour on your arm you would turn this colour over night, so i wrote my favoerite colour on my arm (PINK!)
and over night i had slept on my front and as i woke up i was very pink and sweaty! i had my dad explaining that you only got hot over night!!!

Shanice

I used to think that the way you got an itch, was that caterpillars were crawling around under your skin.

Anon

When I was a kid I believed that the black people were people who never took a bath...

Gail Baake

My mom's sister used to always pinch her when they were kids, just to annoy her. One day my mom started crying and told her mom, and her mom told her sister that if she pinched her she would get a tumor. My mom used to cry all the time because she thought she had a tumor because of this.

RJ

I used to believe if I was touched or rubbed up against by an
afro-american, the brown would rub off on me. Thanks to my embarrasingly RACIST parents for that fear. Thank GOD I outgrew that belief! No thanks to THEM! Egads.

Anon

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