For 21 years, I lived in a society where race wasn't an issue.
I grew up in Cicero, a small suburb outside of Syracuse. Population 27,982. Percentage of white residents: 95.8 percent. Percentage of black residents: 1.2 percent, according to the 2000 Census.
Growing up, there were about seven black kids in my nearly 700-person graduating class. That's about one-tenth of 1 percent.
A co-worker who became like a second mother to me used to call me her "little white daughter" and used to take me to her house to make soul food to feed the work crew.
Simple logic splashed with a touch of naivety told me - the little German girl with a Buddhist mom and a gay brother - that since I was friends with people of all races, ethnicities, sexual preferences and cultures, people should just be seen as people.
It took me until my senior year in college to realize that for me, Cicero had only been colorblind because my eyes were shut to any issues of race. They had never occurred to me.
Some of you may remember that last year, in my naivety, I inadvertently compared a very sweet woman to - an icon I later learned was - a figure from slavery. I shudder to think about what I now consider the most shameful mistake of my journalistic career, but that was the point at which my perceptions of race changed. My defense is simply that I didn't know.
But I'm conscious of race now; I see it everywhere. Walking down the Spine, I still see people - albeit black people, Asian people, white people. Part of me wishes I could go back to being unconscious of race, but a larger part of me is glad that I can begin to understand.
Take a look around. We live in the eighth most segregated city in America. Cultural communities are divided in Buffalo like a social ice cube tray.
But if you look at the demographics of the city of Buffalo - the East Side is predominantly black and Polish; the Lower West Side has a strong Latino population - its apparent what those clear-cut sections have done to Buffalo's minority communities. They've made them strong, close, tight-knit neighborhoods, full of pride and history.
While I was working for The Buffalo News this summer, I got a chance to cover some amazing pieces about individuals and community action groups in these areas. Through those experiences, I saw a Buffalo culture that's thriving - more vibrant and booming with life than anything my suburban Cicero childhood ever saw.
But my question is this: as much as we all want - and should be working for - a fully colorblind society, is it necessarily a good thing?
Don't start writing the hate mail yet; give me a chance here.
I wonder if it's fair for me to look on a culture that has developed because of oppression, isolation and kinship, and want to know about and hold on to a piece of that too. Maybe for the sake of maintaining the culture, I shouldn't get to know about it.
For example, I can't wait to go and see the fashion show at Black Explosion, and yet, it was with timidness that I asked a friend if I would be "allowed" to attend. "The name of the event isn't 'White German Girl Explosion,'" I said.
So, here it is, Black History Month, and I'm stuck with this desire to learn, to talk about cultural differences, roadblocks and solutions - to get it out there and not be ashamed that I am, on a large level, still uneducated - and feeling that I have no right to horn in on a culture that maintains its cultural strength because of its separation.
The truth is I don't have answers to my pseudo-rhetorical questions. I'm only starting on my racial education.
I do know that I'm going to Black Explosion.
Because I think, in the end, celebrating Black History Month is a way for the all parts of the community - even the Cicero-born kids like me - to remember to take a good long look at race and our perceptions of it, with eyes that are not necessarily colorblind, but at least open.
