"Space" Racism

In the early years of her life Jesse Lee Kercheval lived a very sheltered life, she moved to Cocoa florida from Washington D.C. She lived in a small community in Cocoa and looked at the world through very idealistic eyes. Durring the summer when she was fifteen, she went to a three week YMCA camp. There she see's and hears fist hand the racist ideals that were all over at that time. Not only that, looking back on her life she saw instances where she saw blacks being treated differently and didn't understand why. She had "seen a sign posted in a resturant window" that said "Whites Only" (221). She hadn't understood why and had questioned her mother about it. She recalled that her mother explained what it meant, seeming to be embarrised by Jesse's question and clearly in dissagreement with the sign. Yet after Jesse asked her "But if we won't let them come in our resturants, then they might no let us go in theirs" (222). To young Jesse this seemed obvious. She saw that there was no difference what color your skin was, a resturant was a resturant, no matter who owned it. If only more people could have viewed the world the way she did.
At camp, we see that her ideals have changed slightly, nothing is as simple as she thought it was when she was young. She was friends with black kids at camp it made no difference to her what the color of their skin was, in fact one of her two best friends at camp was a black girl named Celia. There were also two black girls at the camp on scolarships, but they kept to themselves and really had no friends beside each other. Celia didn't like them at all, and when Jesse questioned her she said "they just tell everybody in the world that black people are no better than trash, no better than poor ignorant trash" (224). She thought that because they were on scolarship and had secondhand swimsuits they were making her, a fellow black person, look bad. She strongly believed that no one had to be poor, they just had to work hard. She seemed dissapoined in other black people, like they were being lazy. Yet Jesse, doesn't understand she even says "I guess I thought blacks were better than us" (229). She knew that white people discriminated against black people but she didn't realize that it went the other way. That black people, thought the same thoughts about white people or some against other black people. It just goes to show how she looked down on white people for being racist, how she believed that everyone was the same. Skin color doesn't matter.