Ideas of Blackness--The seeds

A thoughtful and important post by cloudscome has me thinking about how it is that we become "raced" growing up.  For me, it happened quite dramatically when my parents split up and we moved to a majority black neighborhood at age 11.  Before that we had lived mostly overseas near or on American military bases.  Our difference had been that we were "Americans" living abroad.  When we arrived in Portland, my brothers and I were very suddenly black.  And we were supposed to choose sides.  Was I going to have white friends?  Was I going to continue to "talk white"?  Until then, I didn't have an idea of blackness or whiteness.  I had no idea about the ideas other people had of race.  I learned quickly--unfortunately--and it was all negative.  I have been thinking that these negative ideas about race, about blackness, about difference were somehow dissipating.  But maybe not.  Where do the seeds of these ideas come from?  There is a very powerful short (7-minute) documentary film by a high school student that I highly recommend.  She doesn't have any answers about how the poisonous seeds of ideas of blackness get planted either, but the film convinces me it's important to ask the question until we find the answers.