This One Time at Band Camp...

In AIS this week we have been talking a lot about race and how to determine race.  We have talked for multiple days and still don't have a solid answer, if that's even possible.  One of the possible ways to determine race that we came up with was "area that a person is from."  We categorized this as being from a continent or a country like "European" or "French."  In the world, people from the United States tend to be viewed as Americans, generally with a negative connotation.  But within the United States there are clearly multiple regions, and each region has different attributes and characteristics.

The summers after fourth and fifth grade I went to a fine arts camp for playing the flute.  I remember how on the first day I was so nervous.  I had a few friends with me, so I wasn't too worried about making friends.  But I had heard other friends at home talk about camp friends and all of the great times that they had with them and how much fun they were, and I wanted that kind of experience.  So I started to go around and talk to some other kids, while my mom went to go talk to a counselor or another parent.  I went up to this one girl, we exchanged names (I don't remember hers), and then she asked where I was from, just as her mom walked up behind her.  I explained that I was from the Northern Suburbs of Chicago.  There was no way that the mom or the girl would have known if I hadn't said it.  I wasn't dressed differently because we had to wear a uniform, I didn't have any fancy electronics with me, I looked like a normal fourth grader.  But as soon as I said the North Shore, the girl's mom looked me up and down and then told her daughter that she wasn't allowed to talk to me.

I didn't ever find out where she was from, I didn't even fully understand what had happened.  I still haven't really come to terms with the fact that the North Shore can have be viewed so negatively, to the point that a woman wouldn't let her daughter talk to me because I'm from here.