Growing Up Learning Hate — and Choosing Something Better.

I want to write about something that took me decades to understand: how I learned hate before I even understood what it was and how I eventually learned to let it go.

This is about my childhood and upbringing. I don’t blame one single person. I learned a lot from older siblings, relatives, neighbors, and the world around me. Hate wasn’t born in me. It was taught quietly, casually, sometimes loudly long before I had the tools to question it.

I grew up in Detroit. In my earliest years, there was no hatred in my heart, on my lips, or even in my thoughts. That came later.

Around the ages of two to four, I became aware of words that carried hate, though at the time I had no idea what they truly meant. In 1967, my family was living on Detroit’s west side at the Earl Hotel, which functioned as a shelter. To me, it was just home. I didn’t know what homelessness was. My older siblings went to school; I was too young.

That same year, Detroit was in the middle of the 1967 riots. There was fear everywhere. We were a white family, and the unrest was framed to us as a racial conflict. Whether we wanted it or not, race became part of our reality.

I learned that people had different skin colors and I was taught, without explanation, that Black people were dangerous. I never understood why.

My mother had darker skin than her children, and people often mistook her for Black or Hispanic. None of that mattered to me. She was my mom. Period. If anything, her skin only made her more beautiful in my eyes. Even during the riots, it wasn’t Black people we feared it was the violence, the gunshots. My mother made sure we stayed away from windows, with most lights off except the kitchen and bathroom.

At that age, I was told that the Black community was fighting white people, but no one explained why. Years later, I learned the truth: police brutality, systemic injustice, and generations of oppression had pushed people to a breaking point. Back then, all I learned was fear.

I also learned to fear the police. My older brothers called them “pigs” and treated them as enemies. So growing up, I feared Black people and cops without understanding either.

I didn’t learn about slavery until the TV miniseries Roots aired. No one taught me the history. No one explained the anger. All I knew was that I was told people were angry with me because I was white and I didn’t know why.

Then there was the word. The one that starts with “N.”

I knew it was bad. I knew I’d get punished for saying it. But no one ever explained why it was hateful. To me, as a child, it was just another word people used when they were angry—no different than “bitch” or “bastard.” I didn’t know its history or its cruelty. I only knew it got reactions.

I heard it from family, friends, neighbors people who would later deny ever using it. But they did. Frequently.

When my eldest brother caught me using it, he came down on me hard. Rightfully so. But again, no one explained why the word was so harmful. Punishment without understanding doesn’t teach it only teaches silence.

One incident stays with me.

My sister, two years older than me, had the only bike left in the family. I had just learned to ride, and one day I refused to give it back. A neighborhood kid named Edward—Eddie—chased me down. He was Black. In my bratty anger, I called him the “N” word.

He could have punched me. I probably deserved it. Instead, he told me to stop calling him that.

Later, I went to his house. His mother had just brought home KFC and offered me a piece of chicken. Edward didn’t want me there and honestly, I don’t blame him. But his mother invited me in anyway.

She asked me why I used that word. She asked if I knew what it meant.

I didn’t.

She explained it to me calmly, firmly, with dignity. She told me why it was hateful, why it hurt, and why it didn’t matter who said it. I was about seven years old. I promised I wouldn’t use it again.

I broke that promise more than once. You don’t unlearn something overnight especially when it’s all around you. But that was the first time someone taught instead of punished.

There were other moments.

My sister once complained about our mother walking us to school because people might think she was Black. My mother shut that down immediately. She reminded us that it didn’t matter what anyone thought she was our mother, and that was all that mattered.

In elementary school, a classmate visited my home and later announced to everyone that I had a “Black momma.” By then, my school had shifted from mostly white to mostly Black. Instead of being ashamed, I turned it around: “So what? Yours is too.”

Another memory: my sister had a teacher who was mixed race. Some kids cruelly called her a “zebra.” I never understood that. I only saw a beautiful woman.

I won’t pretend I was innocent. I used the word. I absorbed the attitudes. I was influenced especially by an older brother who flirted with Nazi imagery and racist language without understanding the danger of it. Hate was modeled. It was normalized.

Children aren’t born with hate in their hearts. They learn it from siblings, neighbors, peers, and sometimes parents.

The difference is what happens after.

Some people never question it. They grow up and carry it proudly, defensively, loudly.

Others stop. They think. They listen. They learn.

I chose to learn.

I learned that the world isn’t all white and shouldn’t be. I learned that power doesn’t equal righteousness. I learned that hate comes in every color, but so does compassion. And I learned that becoming better is a choice you make again and again.

I am not perfect. But I am better than I was.

And that matters.