When the Color of Your Skin Matters

and when it doesn't

As I like to put it to my coworkers, I “almost got kidnapped” last week. They heavily recommended I call the occasion in, and so I did. My least favorite part of that wasn’t when I had to give the dispatcher my age or even when I had to admit I wasn't sure of the difference between an SUV and a “car.”

It was when she asked me what the man looked like.

And I didn’t want to answer.

“Uhh, dark,” I said finally. “Short black hair.”

“White or black?”

“Black.”

I hate that word. Not because I saw a man with dark skin. But because I had to remind myself that I was speaking about a specific person who had harassed me—not a demographic.

I’m not racist. I’m not BLM either. I’m pro-life regardless of the innocent child’s skin color. Because an innocent person is just that—innocent.

Personally? I’m about as white as white gets. Red hair. Pale skin that burns professionally. Freckles. I’m not Aryan, either—Hitler wouldn’t be happy about me, I remember my highschool teacher’s telling me in history class. And guess what. I currently have a boyfriend.

He happens to look like he belongs to the same demographic as the man whom I had to report.

A friend of mine doesn’t like him. She’s never met the guy. But her stipulation is, “You can’t marry him.”

I said, “skin color doesn't matter.”

“In some things it does,” she insisted.

“Not in God’s sight.”

“Well he’s not even Catholic!”

“That’s a much better point,” I admitted. Because it is.

You cannot make me fear a person by complaining about the color of their skin. A person can make me fear them only by their choices.

The man I had to report was a man who chose to try talking to me from his car across the street. Who, after I ignored him, chose to turn and stop his car across my next crosswalk. Who then chose to back his car further into the road when I angled my path to pass behind him.

That was rude. That was disturbing. That was what I reported.

Not the fact that I'd seen a “dark” guy.

I have nothing against Black people. I work with them, both as coworkers and as toddler students. I live near several. I smile at several more on the bus many times a week. In those I’ve met personally, I love their humor and oftentimes their homey-ness. Warm hearts in what is often an even darker world around them.

So when does the color of your skin matter?

Every instant. Like the shades of lilies. Like the day and night sky. Like the hues of a butterfly’s wings.

Because God chose that color for you.

And He saw that it was good.

Gabrielle Marie Kozak, Architect Author

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