Cross-Cultural Relationships

ESSAY by MOLLY B. SIMMONS

PHOTOGRAPH by PENELOPE DARIO

When I was growing up as a white child in the south, race was not something that I had to think about very often, or that I even took note of most of the time. If you had asked me about it, there’s a good chance that I might have said the only two races were Black and white. Maybe Hispanic. Like most white children, especially those in less culturally diverse areas, I was blind to the fact that people lived differently than I did, or that they experienced the world any differently than myself. As I got older this changed: I moved different places, met people from all over the world, learned (unlearned), and grew in ways I never could have imagined. I learned that cultural differences extend beyond race, and include a wide variety of things I never even thought to consider. As a child, I simply assumed that everyone experienced the world in the same way that I did. I learned how to make friends and connect with all sorts of people; I learned how to work on undoing the harmful internalized beliefs that had been instilled in me living in a white supremacist society. This is, of course, an ever-ongoing process that will last throughout the rest of my lifetime.

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