I grew up in a neighborhood that was around 50/50 black/white. So there would often be situations where I'd be hanging with friends and they'd explain to me that what I can get in trouble for vs. the white kids could be very different. I remember when I was maybe in first grade, and in our sub they were building new houses. Me and a couple of my white friends were checking out the construction sites, and my dad saw us. He schooled me on the danger of walking through a construction site, but also the impact of "trespassing" while being a Black kid.

Also little things like I remember bringing a Transformer toy home that one of my friends let me borrow, and I got schooled to NEVER bring something home that wasn't mine, whether given to me or not, because I could get accused of stealing.

As I got older, it's funny that you mention Eyes on the Prize and Roots because I JUST mentioned that to a friend of mine. I'm reading Michael Harriot's book Black AF History (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - and the audio book is currently free on Spotify) and I'm realizing how much I never learned when I was young. As a kid my only education on our history was from Roots, Eyes on the Prize, and Black history programs at my church which were very much surface level.

I didn't fully get racism - with an understanding of institutional racism and micro aggressions - until college. I remember the summer before college, I was working a retail job. I mentioned to a white coworker that I was about to be a freshman at Michigan. That kid (who was going to community college) told me "yeah, you only got in there because you're Black." I was livid. Told my parents about it that night, and I told them that I didn't agree with Affirmative Action because I was so offended that someone would say that. I had a 3.98 GPA and a 32 ACT score - I deserved to get into Michigan regardless of being Black!!!. My parents were taken back by me saying that and checked the MESS out of me. Then I could see on their faces that they realized that they'd never really talked to me about racism. They straight up schooled me that evening, and got me all the way together. They were transparent in sharing their experiences from the 50's and 60's, all the way through that present time in the 90's with the racism they saw in their careers as a firefighter and a teacher. They explained the reasons WHY they'd always been so strict with me.

After that evening I realized I had much to learn, because before that I thought "racism" was the blatant stuff like lynchings and police forces stopping Black kids from going to school, and I didn't notice the more subtle every day racism. The combination of that conversation with my parents with me moving out and going to college that fall, living on my own and starting to see things myself, is what made me really start to learn it.