Being Raised In A Diverse Community Analysis

When I got to high school I was one of 1300 freshmen. My school was massive and I met a lot of different people. I was always a good student so I was placed in harder classes where I saw fewer and fewer non-white kids. Naturally I made friends in these classes and visiting their homes was a completely different experience. These friends lived in the suburbs or on farms in Acushnet. They lived in massive homes with underground pools and large yards. It was such a change from how I grew up. They often had only one parent who would work and when I visited their mom was usually home and had made us food. This was never the case in middle school. I was always offered a ride home and never had to walk. This was white privilege I thought, the American dream. It seemed

Diverse cultural, ethnic, and social backgrounds function as sources of person, family, and community values. These backgrounds serve as a function of being the base of the foundation that makes up a family, community, or a person’s values. A culture shapes how people experience the world. It allows them to be a part of a community through interrelation of beliefs, experiences, and traditions that they share through their backgrounds. Social backgrounds influence how they might view their life values and how they see others. Cultural, ethnic, and social backgrounds affects how someone or a group may view and experience communicational, nutritional, and spiritual values along with the rest of the 12 domains of Purnell’s model. Experiencing

From Kindergarten up to my sophomore year of High School I attended a private school. My elementary school and high school were slightly diverse. The majority of the student body was Caucasian and the rest were made up of several other races. My school environment was very structured and controlled. I had some great teachers and one or two bad teachers. Around fifth grade I started to notice the way teachers perceived me and the challenges I would deal with due to the color of my skin. There were

I came into this country as a refugee from a civil war happening in my country at the young age of 1 1/2, so I've practically lived here in the U.S all my life. Unfortunately, a lot of people believed because I shared the identity of a refugee that I was somehow unintelligent. So when I was put into an ELL class in the third grade because my appearance and identity was the same as the other kids in ELL and not because of my English capabilities, I was "othered". When the teachers eventually tested us, which they should've in the beginning, they were surprised on how well I did. They were surprised that somehow someone who's been living in the U.S for so long and has been doing just fine in class leading up to now did so well on a test I was suppose to do poorly on. They told me specifically that I should be proud that I'm different from the rest of the ELL class, and that it was rare to find someone with my identity. What they didn't understand was what Tatum has brilliantly described in this article. The notion that it has to be an anomaly for someone different to share similar traits with the dominant group. I was taken out of the ELL class and put back into the one I was in previously. The thing that bothered me the most was that it took my mother to contact the teachers for them to test my abilities. I am almost positive there were more kids in the ELL class that were judged on their identities just like

This paper examines how white privilege continues to be constructed today within schools and how teachers have a large role in it. In today’s society, many can go through their lives without understanding what it is or how it effects other people. White privilege is how a person’s lighter skin color benefits them directly from birth and that person doesn’t have to do anything in order to gain these privileges. These privileges are good and usually don’t have any negative consequences for the person receiving them. However, those who do not have white privilege face discrimination and end up paying the price in the future. This paper will uncover the hardships that people face when dealing with white privilege in schools, how it continues to be constructed in society, and how we as a society can become more aware to this problem.

Out of 700 students, I was the third colored individual! Starting, I was very quiet. I didn’t want to talk at all. I everyday was stared at and teachers would demonstrate racial behavior towards me. Not everyone was like those people. Some teachers gave me extra attention and some students tried comforting me when I was confused.

At the beginning of my freshman year, I joined the future educators’ club. I wanted to be a teacher, and after hearing about a full-ride scholarship to St. Francis that was being offered to members, I signed up. Although I was the youngest person in the club, and there were only about five of us, I continued attending. A few meetings passed, and I asked about the opportunity. This moment exposed me to the other side of the racial spectrum. Unfortunately, I was told that I was ineligible for the scholarship because I was Caucasian. In order to qualify, I had to be a minority. I suddenly realized that although there is a vast amount of racial injustice, there are also opportunities for minorities that are not offered to whites. Even though I might earn the same grades as someone of a different ethnicity, I was not given the chance to participate. In my mind, that doesn’t

When it comes to the topic of diversity and what is has taught me I really think of a few things. Diversity has really taught me a lot about myself as well as tolerance to others around me. Really there is nowhere in the world today that diversity is not present or has not had some sort of effect on our society as a whole. All in all I think that diversity really just means being different than others in various ways. I think if the United States never had any instances of diversity we would be a pretty boring and simple society. Many of our great minds of today as well as the past where very

My educational experience with other races had been limited before high school. I can count on one hand the number of classmates from elementary and middle school that were not caucasian. Even in my church there are only a couple of families of color. Entering high school was quite a learning experience for me. Suddenly I was thrust into the world of Joliet West where only a third of the students are white. Entering this new world was like discovering mythical creatures, created by the stories from movies and my older sister, were real. Based on the myths I heard, I found myself questioning if any of the Hispanic students in my classes were illegal immigrants. I encountered loud black girls that intimidated me with their larger than life personalities.

For a short period of time or what would I say my high school years I was interested in law. I wanted to become a lawyer to fight both cases that impacted my life. When I moved to Pennsylvania and went to school where I was one of the few minorities, I realized that it was different. People’s views were very different. I was able to choose the classes I had wished to take. When learned about this I was more interested in school since this was a chance to experience and get taught subjects I found to be most interesting. Law was in fact my favorite subject. Lucky for me there were multiple classes offered for it. Since my freshman year to my senior year I had ended up taking a total of three Law classes. During this time of my life I had started to feel out of place in the school I had attended. Things that I had said or the way I had dressed was just not what they accepted, for example if I was not on the basketball team there should be no reason for me to be wearing certain brands of sneakers. Diversity never seemed to be accepted. I had the need to balance the culture in my life if that could ever make sense to the person that reads this. When trying to integrate my friends together, it never seemed to end well. My friends in white bodies would constantly talk down to my friends in colored bodies. They would always say negative comments about them. What they considered as

Growing up white, I never fell victim to racism or segregation, and sadly, I believe I was ignorant regarding these issues until I reached college. My sister and I were raised in the lower-middle-class by a single mom; But, we were fortunate to be born into a large family that has always supported each other in times of need. Being raised in the middle-class society, I never went without. My mother raised me in a nurturing way, but also believed in tough love in order to create a resilient young woman ready to tackle the world. Through my college education, I have recognized that I was born with white privileges that were given to me rather than something I earned. Coming from a large, tight-knit family, one of the most

I was raised in a diverse environment. Being multiracial- Asian and Hispanic- and going to a school with predominantly minorities has shown me the difficulties that come with it. Minorities often face disadvantages because they have been discriminated against for centuries. Despite what any statistic may say, I believe that minorities are just as capable of making something of themselves. The culturally enriched school that I go to has vividly depicted this to me, allowing me to cross paths with some of the most brilliant students I have ever met. Being raised in an environment where students prove to be more than a statistic on a daily basis has fueled my interest in civil rights, a topic dear to me that I would like to see change in.

In school I remember being taught about the Civil War, and about the Civil Rights movement. I remember my teachers speaking to me about slavery and racism as if it were a thing of the past. I spent all of elementary school believing I lived in a time where Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream had finally came true. I never “saw” color, partly because I was young and partly because I was surrounded by caucasian faces. I didn’t realize I was a minority because I just thought that was the norm. But then middle school hit. And I left my safe haven in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and I took a bus every morning and every afternoon to Ft. Lauderdale, where I attended a magnet school. It was here that I encountered people of color. I had never seen so many

Growing up, race was never an issue for me. I almost always knew what racism was, but I always thought it was a thing of the past, and completely ended when Jim Crow laws were abolished. I thought race did not affect my everyday life, but recently I have learned that even today, being White in America has greatly affected my life. Being White in America has affected how I identity racially, where I grew up, who I grew up with, where I went to College, where I went to high school, and provided me with advantages that many minorities are not lucky enough to have. I have realized this by looking at my life and reflecting through C. Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination(Lambert Lecture). I connected this to my collage through

Growing up in Bakersfield in Seven Oats and Rosedale, as an African-American family, I learned what race was and how it effects my family. Going to schools that were majority white race was difficult because parents seemed to look at us different and prejudged my seven sibling and I because they were uncomfortable with their children playing sports and hanging out with “black kids”. Even at a very young age, I learn what race was because I would get verbal questionnaires by friends, classmates or teachers about my hair, clothing style and athletic capabilities. Questions about why was I different from the majority always was whispered or written on many people faces. My neighbors would see my family living in a five-bedroom house with two back