Written By: Amy Gregg, Advocacy Intern, YWCA of Greater Atlanta
We were both raised by southern families that we didn’t quite feel like we fit into. We both loved to treat ourselves to a spa day. We both felt a deep need for sisterhood amongst the women in our lives. We both loved to spend time in our hammocks under the trees. We both maintained the belief that things simply were not as equal as we were told they would be.
We also both loved to dye our hair red. The first time we ever had a conversation about race relations we were both leaning over the edge of her bathtub, my head under the running faucet and her hands rinsing the residual dye from the roots of my hair. As she finished telling a story of a recent act of discrimination at her workplace, I towel-dried my hair and responded, “Yeah that sounds like institutionalized racism to me.”
She stood quietly for a minute, and I worried that perhaps I had made her uncomfortable. Then looked me in the eye and responded: