This is partially economic based. This is why the wealth gap between the average white American and the average black American is an important topic. Black Americans who grow up in financially comfortable environments are less fearful of making mistakes that impact their income stream. This would also affect their self esteem levels. In my younger years, I was not aware of the pressure placed on African Americans to succeed. I was not taught about it growing up and wasn’t aware I was seeing it. I was raised by a white family. I can honestly say I was totally unaware. I felt no social pressure to succeed or fail, so I just performed. This would have been a happier story if I hadn’t become aware later in life but it would been a much less authentic one. I prefer authenticity.

I began to study the society in which I lived. Once I became aware of the expectations in my mid twenties it hit me hard. I fell into a depression that lasted years. Because I had not been told slowly over my childhood that this sociological relationship existed. It hit me all at once through becoming conscious of the typical black experience in America. I could have stayed there. I could have gotten lost forever in that depression but I kept studying. I kept reading. I set out to understand as much of it as I could. So my false confidence and estimation of my abilities based on my ignorance of society was replaced with actual knowledge. I had never thought of white people as above me or more capable. I grew up almost exclusively in white environments. What hit me in my mid twenties is that they did. I became slightly traumatized by the realization that so many white people actually believed we were different from each other. If I hadn’t grown up around so many it maybe wouldn’t have been as big of a shock. I then began to piece together some of the irrational behavior I witnessed growing up. Mostly from white educators but occasionally from what I thought were my “friends.” Crumpling up my awards and stepping on them, questioning how I had won the spelling bee, skipping over me to read. This more than anything else caused me to fall into a depression. Up until that point of understanding I had no idea it was because of the color of my skin. I thought people were just bullies. I feel sympathy for my family because their strategy had been to protect me from knowing this information. I can say now that to an extent their strategy may have been the best one. Originally, I thought that keeping something like racial dynamics in the US hidden from a black or biracial child is a bad strategy. It disconnects them from their culture and self identity. But this race conversation does not give enough credit to the concept of socialization. While I became mentally aware that I would be identified as inferior on first sight. It could not in fact undue 18–20 years of existing socialization to the contrary. Because I had spent almost twenty years laboring under the assumption that it was bullying rather than racism. Just because I had the knowledge later in life that this was not case. This thought could not in fact undue the past. Perhaps I looked at the past differently now. But it did not in fact change that I had accomplished those things and had not risen to the bait of engaging in a conversation based on racism.

This may seem a little muddled. I hope people can understand what I am saying about socialization and economic pressure placed on African Americans. I am simply providing evidence that without these stressors placed on black people. Many of these dynamics do not exist. They are constructions played out in socialization. If you remove the seed of subordination and racial hierarchies this behavior does not manifest itself through your thoughts. So while momentarily I was set back by the realization that white people thought they were my superior. It didn’t take me long long to reason through how silly that idea was. Because I had 18–20 years of evidence from my own life that this is not the case. I have actually met quite a few black people in the South who are not aware of this information. The dynamic that many black Americans were socialized to see. Is a real valid phenomena but it is not in fact a truthful one. So I see many black Americans try and compete or prove something to white people. I do not view white people as biologically separate from myself at all. I view them as people who have bought into incorrect myths perpetuated through their socialization. So when a scenario occurs where I start to see their socialization manifest in negative ways. I disengage with them. It’s that simple. If a white person begins to display irrational anger toward me. I don’t engage I view it as an unfortunate side effect of their socialization. It’s almost like they were socialized to display mentally ill behavioral patterns . Grand delusions of superiority is a mental illness. So rather than taking it personally I simply recognize that they have a long way to go to unpack their own socialization.