Learning that I was white

It was television, black and white television, of course, that taught me about race - mine by way of others. It might have been my neighbor's mother, commenting on the blond hair of Mary Wells as she sang Two Lovers on American Bandstand.
It might have been my father admiring the natural rhythm of African dancers on some National Geographic-type show.
It might have been my mother explaining to me that natives didn't mean blacks in African jungles; natives just mean people who lived in a place. I was a native of America. It took a while for me to get that into my head. By the time I did, I knew that I was white.
In a small town in central New England, we had no occasion to meet anyone other folks of European descent. It was mostly Finns, French (by way of Canada), Swedish, Polish, English, and Irish. To compensate, one darker-than-usual Italian  was nicknamed "Nig". I don't know that any harm was meant by it or felt by it. I didn't know because I didn't ask.

I listened to racist jokes and disliked them not because they were offensive, but because they weren't funny.  I sometimes used racist slang because I was trying on personas to find one that fit. I was also a Marxist, Objectivist, and pre-Yuppie for much of the same reason. I argued race relations with our high principal who argued in return that the French-Canadians were treated just as badly.
What I learned about race, then, came from tv, books, and music. I read Claude Brown's Manhcild in the Promised Land and got a nervous A- on my book report. (The teacher wasn't sure if this was an appropriate book, but also wasn't sure if it alright to say that it wasn't.)
The book showed me as much about life in the city as it did about race.When I heard The Drifters sing Up on The Roof, I imagined a world far away from what I would ever be. I didn't, until much later, realize that when I climbed 30 feet up a pine tree in the woods behind the house where I see fields and more trees that I was doing much the same thing.
Except, that, of course, it wasn't the same thing at all.
Or that the song was written by a couple of white folks.