Wrestling discussions and chill zone for wrestling lovers. It’s tiny. It’s not very active (tho I’d like for that to change) but it’s there if you’d like a place besides tumblr to vent about all things wrestling (even aew and njpw bc amazing people there too) and always welcoming new people. 🤍

We don’t do hate here

There'll be no hate from this blog. So if you're a hateful person (Transphobic, homophobic, ect) find another blog to follow because you're not welcome here.

-shinobi-naruto-rp

I had just finished my sophomore year, happy that I was able to make it through Biology with the worst possible teacher, and surprised that I performed as well as I did. It was a good time of year, with summer approaching and school coming to an end. This summer was supposed to be special, and that was the fact that I was going to finally become an assistant counselor at my camp. I was waiting for the three years of training to come to an end, and now I was finally receiving the white staff shirt I had been dreaming of for what seemed like an eternity. I had been attending the camp since I was three, and everyone there knew me. I had essentially grown up there, and I had a ton of friends that I looked forward to seeing every summer. The camp was predominantly attended and run by wealthy, white Jewish people, and being a middle class black male I stuck out like a sore thumb. I had never felt out of place at the camp ever, and the people there treated me no differently, but this summer had been particularly different. My mother had always brought up that there were still people in this world who did not accept black people, and felt the need to mention it the older I got. It would come up in conversation more and more frequently, and I found it strange that she was mentioning it so much. It was as if she knew that summer would be different, and wanted to reassure me not to let it get to me. My mother is a very special woman, even when I feel that she is doing everything in her power to try to frustrate me. She always says “Mama knows best,” and I would always kind of shoulder her off and not really take heed of her words. Deep down I knew she was right, because whatever she told me always ended up being true in the end. You would think that by this time, I would have learned to listen to her, but I continued to let her words go in one ear and out the other. My school was a melting pot of races, cultures, and religions. No one ever discriminated, and there were never any racial conflicts. My friend group was as diverse as it gets, as we had every race from Hispanic to Sri Lankan. So when it came to my friends, we covered every part of the spectrum, and there were never any racial issues. Although I was never had many black friends, I never felt out of place because my friends and I just saw each other as people and didn’t judge based on skin color. It was around late June, and it was that time of summer when the yellow short bus would be waiting outside my house to pick me up. I was the first and earliest pick up, being that I was the bus counselor for that year, and had to make sure that everything ran smoothly. There was something different about that first trip that year though. It was as if everything had become more noticeable and the differences between neighborhoods hit me like a brick. As we crossed the drainage bridge, it was like we were coming into a whole new world. Mansions and estates sprouted up in place of the two-family homes and townhouses that were on the other side. There were a different variety of stores that seemed to be in this area, and they seemed to be on the higher-end of things. Everything also seemed to be family owned, and not stores from giant franchises. The Hondas, Toyotas and Nissans got replaced by BMW’s, Audis, and Mercedes Benz’s. The streets were much cleaner than they were on the opposite side, and it was as if no one ever lived there. The neighborhood was quiet, and you would see the occasional person washing his car, or someone coming out to get their mail. It seemed to me as if they did not socialize with each other and had no intention to do so. As we pulled around the grove of trees that enclosed the camp, through the clearing a massive field became visible. The field was giant in every sense of the word, and had every activity you could think of. On the front end there were two swimming pools, next to that was a tennis facility, and around that was an outdoor basketball court with a brand new wooden playground neighboring it. Around the fence from that were four soccer goals and a full baseball arena next to that. On the side of the dugout was a stage, where some performances took place, and in the middle of this was a span of empty grassland, that could be used for anything that you wanted it to be. The camp was a child’s wonderland, and the activities they had available were amazing. “Do you speak black?” It was about three weeks into the summer and that was the question I was asked by one of my campers. I was very drawn back when I initially heard the question, semi-hoping that I heard what he asked wrong. It took me a moment to realize that he was dead serious when he asked me this question, and was looking for a legitimate answer. I explained to him that black was not a language, and that what he asked was offensive. The most unbelievable part of his response was the fact that he said his parents had told him that black people spoke another language. I told my camp counselor what he said, and even he was amazed at the question I had been asked. When I arrived home later that evening, I told my parents the events that went on that day. My mom did not seem as surprised as I thought she would. I already knew what she was thinking, especially because she warned me this was going to happen. She asked how I handled the situation, and I explained to her that I had spoken to the counselor. She and I both knew that the camper was not going to get into any serious trouble, but the scary part of this situation was that he learned that from his parents. After the incident, I felt different being at the camp. The incident made me feel apart from the rest of the camp, and for the first time, I felt like I stuck out. It made me wonder how many other people thought the way the he did, and how many other parents were teaching their kids this. My mom reassured me that not everyone at the camp discriminated against black people, and that there were just a select few that still lived in the past. I realized that she was right, and that I was not different from these people and that I belonged there. She made me realize that I am proud to be black, and will not let anyone make me think otherwise.