Immediately after that, I was put into foster care. A few months later, I started having home visits with the Krohn family. Home visits turned into weekend visits and they wanted me back. Then, on September 8, 1999, I became Emmaline Michelle Krohn.

It was so weird adapting to the atmosphere of an all white family. When I was little, I didn’t notice the color difference at all when I would play with older sister, Olivia. Getting older, however, made me start to realize that my family and I have many differences. When my mom did my sister’s hair each morning, she didn?t do mine.

My mom would take me to special places to get mine done because she didn’t know how to do it. My siblings learned how to swim really fast. Unfortunately, learning how to swim took me longer because African Americans are built with more muscles so it is harder for them to float.

When I grew old enough to realize that I was different, I would get so mad at God for creating me a different color. Then, when I was about ten or twelve, I saw the movie The Blind Side, about the football player Michael Oher; it changed my whole opinion. Watching that movie made me realize that the Michael Oher family treated him no different.

That soon made me realize that what President Gerald R. Ford said is true: we need to “Seize the opportunity to honor the too often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout history.”

I thought everyone didn’t like, or care about, African Americans. That’s when I realized I was the one making those conclusions, and that I should instead always try to honor them. When people make comments about me being “white washed” and not like other black people at my school, I ignore them because I know that I was made African American for a purpose.

For more columns, read the Feb. 14 article, Say no to ‘senioritis’.