As a five-year-old, every night I would pray to God to make me white. I grew up in an orphanage filled with largely white children, where I was often ridiculed for my skin colour.
And even at that age, I realised that some opportunities in this world were not for the taking if you were black.
'Please God, lighten my skin and make me like everyone else,' I would whisper before I went to sleep. It sounds like an impossible dream, but, for me, it came true.
I was recently offered a job as a butcher, which I know I wouldn't have got were I black. How can I be so sure? After offering me the job, the owner of the business discreetly reassured me that it was not an establishment where black people were allowed to work.
As a white man, I also no longer have to live in fear of experiencing the physical and verbal assaults I used to endure as a black man - attacks that my black friends still endure.
At a school reunion a few years ago, I watched an old acquaintance of mine - who is black - being subjected to racist name-calling by a group of drunk white men.
I was furious, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't relieved that the fact my skin is now white meant I could just get on with my night in peace. Nothing pleases me more than the fact that my two daughters, Stacey, 22, and Zoe, 20, both have fair skin and red hair.
SOURCE 
Previous Topic
Index
