Cierra Ritzert sat by a campfire with her friends and some neighbors, watching the flames lick at the darkness and listening to the wood crackle in the intense heat.

They were having a good time. They joked around. They shared stories. They had some laughs.

Ritzert, the lone person of color in the group, felt completely relaxed and at home.

There was a lull in the conversation, a brief window of silence that was quickly shattered.

“I wish I could just hang all Black people,” one of her neighbors said.

Ritzert was silent.

Her friends were silent.

Ritzert was afraid to confront the neighbor, petrified at what he might do and scared at what her friends might say.

Ritzert left the fire, went inside her Slippery Rock University off-campus apartment, and sobbed until she finally fell asleep.

“I think about this day all the time,” said Ritzert, 24, a Karns City High School graduate.

She had never wanted to talk about it.

Even with her family.

Even with her closest friends.

Until now.

[naviga:h3]'No one is born racist'[/naviga:h3]

Ritzert felt she could no longer keep incidents like the one she had experienced on that traumatizing evening buried, especially as she watched in horror the video of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police and the protests around the nation that followed.

“I'm not scared anymore,” she said.

Ritzert is a product of a white mother and black father and has lived her entire life in Chicora, a town of a little more than 1,000 residents that is 99.5 percent white, according to the 2010 census. Growing up as a biracial girl in a non-diverse area has at times been an intense challenge for Ritzert and her younger sister, Taylor, who just turned 23.

Cierra Ritzert was 8 years old the first time she heard the “N-word.”

Ritzert and her best friend in elementary school were thumbing through a National Geographic magazine when the girl giggled and pointed at the word “Niger.”

“This is a bad word they use for Black people,” the girl said, confusing the country with the slur and then saying it out loud.

Ritzert started crying.

“I had never heard that word in my life and I didn't know why it was used as a bad word for Black people,” Ritzert said. “It made me sad. The teacher had to explain it to me.”

What Ritzert didn't understand — and can't fathom even to this day — was how an 8-year-old knew the word to begin with.

“It starts with the parents,” Ritzert said. “No one is born racist.”

Ritzert said she has been reflecting a lot on the racist incidents that have shaped her life.

It was something she was reticent to do in the past.

But something she has found to be necessary now.

In the sixth grade, Ritzert went to a birthday party. She was the only Black girl there.

“We're salt,” a girl said. “And Cierra is pepper.”

It was innocuous, but it still stung.

While working as a waitress to help pay her way through college to earn her exercise science degree from SRU and then her physical therapist assistant degree from Butler County Community College, customers would occasionally stare uncomfortably at Ritzert.

“We've just been sitting here debating something,” a patron would ask. “What nationality are you?”

Some customers would also ask bluntly, “What are you?”

It happened to her more times than she could count.

“People straight up just ask that. Every time I want to ask, 'What are YOU? I'm a person, what do you mean? Why are you analyzing me?'” Ritzert said. “If I had a dollar for every time someone said that to me, I'd never have to work again.”

When she tells them she's biracial, they seem disappointed.

“As if I'm not exotic enough,” Ritzert said.

Sometimes her friends will say something racist and then their faces will flush with embarrassment.

They'll look at Ritzert and say, sheepishly, “I wasn't talking about you. You don't count.” Or they'll counter with, “Well, you're not even Black.”

Ritzert finds those statements particularly troubling.

“How do I not count?” she asks. “How am I different? How do you feel about other Black people that you don't think of me?”

She believes saying these things aloud, bringing these incidents into the light and asking the tough questions is a necessary first step in bringing about change.

“A lot of people don't think that these things happen to us,” she said. “They are ignorant to the fact that these things continue to happen or don't believe that they do happen. No matter where I go or what I do, some people are going to judge me before I even open my mouth.”

She's not the only one who feels that way.

<h3>Seeing color </h3>Olivia DeBacco is also a product of a white mother and black father. She was raised in East Brady, a town of a little more than 900 nestled in the curve of the Allegheny River that is 99.4 percent white.She too has had to deal with overt racism.DeBacco, 20, a 2018 Karns City graduate who is studying to be a nurse, took to Facebook to shed light on what it was like growing up as the only person of color in her elementary school.“When I was in the third grade, I had a girl in the second grade tell me, 'My dad thinks you're a (n-word),” DeBacco wrote.She didn't know what that meant. She asked her mother, who explained it to her.DeBacco, who has two older brothers and a younger sister who are white, didn't understand.It changed the way she thought about herself. She suddenly realized she was different.“It was actually really hard on me from then on,” she said. “You don't see color until someone teaches it to you.”DeBacco also relayed stories of how two boys called her, “Black Olive” in the third grade, and how at Karns City High School when she and a group of classmates were discussing costumes for a pep rally and Curious George came up, one of her friends said, “I think we all know who can wear the monkey costume,” while looking right at her.None of her other friends said a word.Everyone was silent.DeBacco went home and cried until she fell asleep.DeBacco said her Facebook post was to show that if she went through those things, imagine what others have gone through. She implored people, “It needs to stop. Educate yourselves.”DeBacco is trying to do just that.Because of her post, she and other people of color in the area will meet with teachers at Karns City Area School District to discuss how the district can combat instances of racism in the future.“Old high school teachers have reached out to me and Cierra and others about getting together with administrators, so they can ask us questions: 'What can we do to make this better? What have you gone through?' That's been a real positive thing,” DeBacco said.<h3>Increase understanding </h3>On the whole, DeBacco said her experience growing up in East Brady and going to school in the Karns City district has been overwhelmingly good.“There's actually been a lot of positivity,” DeBacco said. “I've always had people who have accepted me. It's only been a couple of people who are set in their ways who have been racist or rude to me.”DeBacco wants to make sure those who are coming through the school district now have better experiences. She is going to be a part of a mentor program to be a sympathetic ear to any person of color who needs to talk.“I actually had a couple of younger girls who are biracial who texted me separately, telling me, 'Wow, thanks for posting what you did. I thought I was the only one going through that. I thought I was going through this alone.' That made me feel so good.”DeBacco also hopes to talk to the Karns City administration about teaching more about Black history.She and Ritzert shared the same concern about how only slavery, segregation, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are taught in school.They said no one is taught about the many inventions made by Black people throughout history and stolen by their white counterparts. No one is taught about Black Wall Street, the prosperous Greenwood District in Tulsa, Okla., that was destroyed by white people in 1921. No one is taught about Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in this country.“If they had a better understanding of the history,” DeBacco said, “that would change a lot.”Both DeBacco and Ritzert have relied on better understanding from those closest to them.<h3>'I see you'</h3>Ritzert was shaken by the hateful and racist words that fell from her neighbor's lips on that night around the fire.She was even more dispirited by what wasn't said by her friends.It occurred to Ritzert in the past few weeks that there were few times in her life when anyone came to her defense.“The only time that I can remember in my life anybody ever saying anything was in the eighth grade. Someone, a guy, had called me the N-word,” Ritzert said. “One of my guy friends stood up and punched him right in the face. That was the only time in my entire life I remember anyone ever saying or doing anything, which is crazy to me.”Ritzert said she doesn't know how it happened — probably out of conditioning or self-preservation — but she always remained quiet when faced with racism aimed toward her.She'd walk away.She'd laugh it off.She'd tell herself it didn't matter.Ritzert also made excuses for those around her who failed to act.It wasn't their battle.It wasn't their fight.“I felt like I was always the one sticking up for other people, defending other people,” Ritzert said. “When it came time to stick up for me in things like that, no one ever said anything. So, yeah, that's hard.”But Ritzert said she has a lot of people in her corner. One of them is her boyfriend, who is white.“He is really great about everything,” Ritzert said. “He came to the protest that was (at Diamond Park in Butler). He's not a social media person, but he's starting to share things and post. I don't think he really understood what was going on until recently.”DeBacco said she has a strong circle of friends who have had her back throughout her life — people who may not understand what it is like being a person of color, but who are trying.“Some of my best friends reached out to me saying they had no idea how much some of the things they may have said may have been hurtful,” DeBacco said. “They said they were going to try to change now.“My best friends, they really do realize they can never really know what it is like,” DeBacco added. “They'll tell me, 'Liv, I really don't have any clue what it's been like, but I'm going to try my hardest to understand.“It's been hard being the only person who doesn't look the same as everyone else, especially when your entire family doesn't look like you. I just try to embrace it and realize I am who I am.”DeBacco emphasized at the end of her Facebook post that she is not vilifying everyone in the area.“I also want to say thanks to family, friends, teachers along the way that have always been on my side and realizing that (this) issue is something real,” she wrote. “I see you, and I thank you for that.”<h3>Longing for diversity</h3>Ritzert wants nothing more than to leave Butler County the first chance she gets.When asked if it is because of the racism she has experienced, she nods.“Yeah,” she answered before continuing. “It's not even just African-Americans in this area. I've grown up with so many people in this community saying things about Chinese people, about Muslims, Mexicans, Native Americans — any other race other than white.“I've never wanted to live in Butler County. I've just been waiting for the time to be right to pack up and move.”DeBacco said she also wants to leave the area because of its lack of diversity.“I do want to live in a more diverse area,” she said. “I don't want my kids to experience the things I have experienced and I want them to be around all different kinds of people.“But I do love the town where I came from, and I think I always will go back and try to do things to make it better. It can get to that place.”Ritzert sometimes finds herself marveling over the very absurdity of racism.“The only reason why we are all different colors is because of where people lived a long time ago, where people came from,” Ritzert said. “It has nothing to do with one set of people being more superior than another. It's literally made up. It's made up.”Yet she sees so much of it.Ritzert doesn't have the answers. But she said the first step at finding those answers is asking the right questions.“Everybody is the same, no matter what you are,” she said. “The racist things that are ingrained into society — whether you are Black or white or Asian or Islamic or Spanish, whatever you are — those things continue to happen.“You have a choice to be racist or not. You have a choice to open your eyes to other communities and other cultures and realize they are just people, same as you.”