Two years later, her parents moved to Buffalo, where she took her first ballet class. Soon after, she returned to New Haven. Her parents divorced, and she moved with her mother to Del Mar, California, where she lived from the ages of six to twelve, while her mother attended college. When I was a child, I was the only black kid in the entire school district. No one knew how to deal with me.
Racism has a lot to do with absence.
You're visible, you're there, you just feel like your opinion is absent, your voice is absent. She spent summers with her father in the black community in New Haven. There, she encountered another problem. The kids teased me because I talked like a white person. This continues to be an issue for Janine.