“Black or White?”
by Kelvin Chin
Author
Meditation Teacher
When I was 8 years old, we went on a family trip from Massachusetts to Virginia. I had never been that far away from home before. And never to that part of America.
So early one morning, my mom and dad packed up lots of sandwiches and snacks, along with a large gray stainless steel dispenser full of Hawaiian Punch, and a package of paper cups and bundled my sleepy 4-year old baby sister and me into our 1952 Pontiac sedan and hit Route 1 South in Norwood. Off we went on our road trip to see the Luray Caverns.
There were no interstate highways from Maine to Florida yet. So Route 1 with its many traffic lights, cars, trucks and train crossings that went through both urban and rural areas was the only way to get from Point A to Point B, north or south along the East Coast.
So our odyssey included much waving at truck drivers to get them to honk their loud horns, waiting for 50-75 car freight trains to pass, stopping to pee at gas stations while my dad filled up the tank once again, and lots of staring out of the car windows at the tapestry of people, buildings, and foliage as they changed their shapes and sizes from what I was used to seeing in my small New England hometown.
Finally we got to a motel nearby Luray Caverns and got settled in for a good night’s sleep. Early the next morning after breakfast we went to the caverns, saw some amazing huge underground “rooms” full of stalagmites and stalactites. (My mom taught me to tell the difference by which word has the “c” for “ceiling” — that’s the word for the ones that hang down and the other word with the “g” is for the ones that appear to come up from the “ground.”)
But the most memorable part of the trip for me was going to the bathroom at the entrance to the Luray Caverns when we finished the tour. I had to go pee. But my father didn’t have to. So he said, “You go by yourself, Kel. I’ll wait for you out here.”
Keep in mind it was April 1959. And we were in the South — in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
So when I walked over to the public restrooms, I saw a sign that said “Whites” and another sign saying “Coloreds.” And for the first time in my life, I was confused about my skin color.
I had to pee pretty badly but in that split second moment as I stared at those two signs, I thought to myself, “Which one am I?”
I saw dark-skinned men going into the “Colored” bathroom, and Caucasian men going into the one labeled “Whites.” I made an executive decision on the spot that even though I knew I was neither one, I went into the “Whites” bathroom.
No one said a thing and I didn’t look at anybody while I was in there so I don’t know if there was any reaction. But I got in, did my business and got out.
But how emotionally strange that was for me at 8 years old….
I’d never encountered segregated restrooms before that day. And I’d never had to make a decision about my skin color until that moment.
It obviously has left a mark in my consciousness ever since.
Sure, I’d had a few kids make fun of me in Norwood for being the only minority kid in the school system. And while that was personally hurtful, this was different.
I was confused by the identification of a person merely by the color of their skin. And further baffled by why people of different colors would have to pee in different places from each other. Pee is pee, I thought.
How ridiculous. How utterly superficial. How absurd.
Who cares who is standing next to you while you pee?
It made no sense to me then at 8 years old. And segregation or even thinking differently about someone merely based on their skin color still doesn’t make sense to me.
Many years later, now that I’ve had time to reflect on that experience from my childhood, I’ve come to the realization that the type of mind that finds such a superficial assessment of another person as somehow valid is one that probably has had a fairly limited life experience. And unfortunately such a mind will most likely continue to choose to keep their lives limited because that’s their comfort zone — to stay in their “silo” where they feel “safe” with other people “who look just like them.”
It still seems as childish as it did when I was 8 years old. Yet after six decades (this lifetime) observing that behavior, I’ve decided to let those people be. Because that’s all we can do.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 50 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.