The Trauma of Insecurity and Racism

Can you remember the first time you were called a name that could not be erased, a statement of who others thought you were, something terrible and at the same time unknown? Almost like a disease or something dirty...something ou could never actually expunge or change, something you had no way of knowing you were? It is hard then to imagine what it would feel like to be told that you were special, gifted, better than those others? That moment when you asked, why? Why have those ideas about me, why treat me this way, where did you get that idea of race? This is going to be an exploration of race in the everyday. It will be about mascots and the way we bifurcate ourselves, damage who we can be, when we differentiate what people so easily today define, following their reading of Levinas, the Same and Other. What is it like to ask, "who are you?"