I am quite certain that when I walk down any street in America, no one can tell whether I am African or African-American. My accent would surely betray my identity, but someone would have to hear me speak for that revelation to occur. Either way, it is pretty likely that many of the prejudices that people hold against black men are often projected onto me.

Racism in America has many faces. Some forms of it involve violence that causes grave bodily harm to the victims, or even death in some cases. Thankfully, in most parts of the country today, that kind of bigotry is not as common as it used to be in decades past. The more prevalent type nowadays is race-based discrimination through which people of color are often denied equal treatment in areas such as employment, healthcare, housing, and education. Even without posing physical threat, this kind of prejudice does cause devastating and long-term damage.

When people are made to feel that they are somehow inferior to others in their societies, the effect can be quite traumatizing. On top of the unequal access to resources and opportunities, the “second-class” citizens are often robbed of the self-confidence they need to navigate their worlds. This problem occurs everywhere, not only in America.

I have often wondered how my life would have turned out if I had been born in America. When I was growing up in Ghana, my unusually large family lived in extreme poverty in a tiny remote village. Even in that small community, tribalism was present, and it influenced how people related to each other. But its impact was not as pernicious as that of racism because the socio-economic chasm that existed among the tribes wasn’t as wide as what prevails in American society. The uniformity of skin color also helped.

Most importantly, the schools in Ghana were predominantly government-run institutions so the vast majority of the country’s children received similar teaching in a cultural environment that enabled all kids, regardless of where they lived, to get a good enough basic education. I was able to use that elementary education as a stepping stone to escape the harsh environment into which I was born. The situation is quite different for disadvantaged children in America. Here, K-12 public education is predominantly funded by property taxes so school districts and zip codes determine the quality of education that children from different socio-economic backgrounds receive.

Whereas I was quite oblivious to the extent of my poverty and its associated disadvantage relative to children in other parts of Ghana in my early years, poor American kids are fully aware of theirs. By the time I realized how bad my situation was, I was already too deep in the water and had no choice but to swim on. In contrast, America’s disadvantaged children know how heavily the deck is stacked against them, and that often leads most of them to give up even before the race begins.

I left my Ghanaian village as a young man and went on a journey that took me to many places around the world before I ended up in America. Along the way, I learned numerous lessons that have formed a toolkit that I use to navigate the American landscape as a person of color. Also, because of my early life in that multi-tribal society, the racism that I witness in America often seems like a familiar movie. I am therefore quite a bit better equipped to deal with it than perhaps native-born blacks in America are.

One of my biggest advantages is that I had become quite used to living closely with white people by the time I came to America. When I first arrived in the Soviet Union from Ghana to begin my college studies, I had a Soviet roommate whom I was initially highly suspicious of. I had been warned in Ghana that the Soviets were not very nice people, and that they would be watching my every move while I was in their country. Thus, in my mind, my roommate was a spy that I needed to stay as far away from as I could.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Within a short period of time, I realized that my roommate was one of the best human beings anyone could meet anywhere. That was a real education for me. It opened my eyes and encouraged me to interact more freely with the Soviets everywhere I met them in the country. I took that attitude with me on my travels throughout Europe during that period. The overwhelmingly positive experiences I had in my dealings with thousands of white people in those years convinced me that skin color doesn’t determine a person’s character. I have since become programmed to assume that everyone I meet, regardless of who they are or where they are from, is a good human being until I see concrete evidence to make me believe otherwise.

The other benefit I have is that I had a fair amount of high education when I came to America. That facilitated my entry into the kinds of professions that allow people at least some control over the choice of where to live. For most native-born blacks who start life in the kind of poverty that I experienced in my village, those options are often quite limited. Because of racial segregation, many find themselves trapped in poor neighborhoods that are rife with poverty and violent crime. Blacks living in such places have few opportunities to have any interactions with their fellow white citizens. That allows the suspicions that people from different racial groups harbor against each other to endure.

The things I witnessed in my classrooms when I taught in an inner-city K-12 public school motivated me to write my memoir, The Boy from Boadua. I want to use it to encourage disadvantaged children in America—and elsewhere—to believe in themselves and know that their situation is not as hopeless as it might seem to them. It is a message that I deliver as strongly as I can whenever I have an opportunity to speak to groups of young people.

Inevitably, anytime I speak to young black students, the racial subject comes up. I know that it is a psychological barrier that most of them need to overcome in order to progress academically and in life generally. However, because my life experiences are so different from theirs, I am also aware that it is a topic that I need to broach with great sensitivity in front of such audiences. My approach to that discussion is still evolving, but I hope to find the right balance soon.