Removing blindfolds can be a tricky business if you know how to do it the right way.  Blindfolds are invisible, making them hard to find on people.  One of the worst things about blindfolds is the fact that you don’t know you are wearing one until it comes off.  One morning, I walked into English, and my teacher had decided that we were going to read, To Kill a  Mockingbird by, Harper Lee.  I had heard that it was a classic and was one that truly tugged at your heartstrings, but I was skeptical.  

As the weeks went by, we read the book and with every day that went by, I was beginning to realize that I had a blindfold on.   The climax of  To Kill a Mockingbird is the part when Tom Robinson, a black man, is tried in court for raping a young white women.  He gets a lawyer, a white man, who brings wonderful evidence to show that Tom couldn’t have committed this crime. However, by the end of the trial, the men in the jury crown Tom as guilty. Guilty.  I realized in that moment that the people of the jury must have been wearing blindfolds the day they crowned Tom guilty. 

By the time I had finished the book, my blindfold was stripped from my eyes and had been cast aside onto the floor.  My eyes stung from the bright lights that reality allowed me to see. I looked up from the newly whitened pages and looked around the class and saw a group of children of all different races sitting together and reading the same book, and we were not having any problems.  So, why was everyone else in society having such a problem?  I set down the book down on my desk and was astonished as reality hit me like a slap in the face.  I then realized that, the reality of the story was also a reality that we face now.

Many people of color are being oppressed and white people are not changing their ways of being cruel.  I could see the society that was true, one that was previously obscured by the veil of childhood.  I looked around and wondered how many other people’s vision was obscured because of their innocence to our true reality.  I went to my mother, and told her about what I had just finished reading.  She looked at me with a sad smile and her eyes dripped with sorrow and all she could do was shake her head and say, “I know Theresa, things are not what they should be.”   My mother then went to sit down and she turned on the news and it blared facts about black men running rampant in the streets. 

I felt as if I was watching all this go by from behind a glass wall.  I was watching and hearing this noise, but I couldn’t help it.  I sat motionless in front of the T.V. with my mother.  From that moment on, I have blossomed like a tulip.  My ideas are now more related to a woman’s than a girl’s.  I walk around with clearer eyes that try and soak up all the things I can.  I also try to gently untie the blindfold around other people’s eyes.  We live in a society today where almost everyone is wearing some type of blindfold.  Some people like to wear a tightly tied blindfold, some like to wear theirs’ lose, some even like to wear theirs’ barely covering their eyes .  It all depends on how much you are willing to let yourself see.