I see color

I see things.

I see haters, as evidenced by this t shirt:

I see you, hi Hater!!!

I see rich people. They drive old volvos with high end high school lacrosse team stickers. They have mixed grey-blonde hair in low ponytails, carry well worn italian leather bags and love authentic Indian food and community service.

I see rich people. They don't even know they are rich.

I see color. Of course I do. Lots of people say they do not see color. These people are:

1. Liars

2. College freshmen

3. Under age four

4. Nice not-racist liberals and also;

5. Liars

I see color. It is easy and a survival skill when you grow up the only black kid in the room. Oh you see it friends. You see it when it is black history month and the whole classroom looks at you. You see it when you are barely 18 and you meet the parents of a white boy you are starry eyed in love with and they cannot even look directly at you. You may not have seen color before but in that moment you can cut it with a knife and you can feel it cut you too. It is easy to see color when you look at thousands of refugees in America on the floor of the superdome. It is easy to see color when you look at the senate floor. It is easy to see at the law firm christmas party, and it is particularly easy to hear color after a few too many glasses of Christmas cheer.

Lately I see color a lot. In Cleveland, I was not a minority. There were plenty of people with skin like mine. That is not the case here in West Hartford, so the color is noticeable once again. Not bad mind you, just noticeable. However I think the color politics are different here. I spent most of my last months in Cleveland pregnant. I constantly received both pitied looks and sighs and resentful, hateful looks. Apparently when you see my color it distracts from the very nice diamond rings on my left hand. Here I get treated like any other West Hartford mom with an under-utilized degree and a successful husband. I suppose that when everyone is balling out of control color gets less and less relevent.

So yes, I see color. And if you can words here in black and white, you see it too.