Alicia

*Trigger Warning*

The other day, my aunt announced that she was no longer a fan of Barack Obama due to his remarks on the Trayvon Martin case. In typical white-person fashion, she thinks that Obama revealed himself as an anti-white racist by suggesting that white people are racist.

After my brother and I tried to explain and defend Obama’s point of view, she said, “Well, I don’t trust anyone, black or white. But then, you know, every time [other relative] was mugged, it was by a black guy. I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s good and bad in everything.”

I’ll say there is. For instance, the men who mugged that relative were black. But the man who molested me was white.

I didn’t tell her that, though. When I told my parents I’d been molested, my mom got angry at me for not responding strongly enough, and my dad got so disturbed I felt like I was supposed to comfort him for my having been sexually assaulted. They got even more overprotective than usual soon after I told them (even though I was twenty, texting them every time I went someplace else wasn’t enough — now my brother had to accompany me there).

I like to think that if I’d told my aunt about my experience, she would have changed her thoughts about race and crime. I like to think that she would have channeled her negative feelings about that incident towards the white man who molested ...