My Story Of Race. I Was Born In A Small Steel Mill Town

Growing up as an african american male it was hard to identify my character throughout my educational career. At a very young age my dad alway wanted me to succeed in life, but in the back of my mind I always thought “ Am I really cut out to becoming successful”. I grew up in a culturally diverse suburban area. Growing up in the suburban area I made unbreakable bonds that will forever exist.

Imagine living in a town that was once thriving with successful businesses to a community that barely exist. As you travel down the deserted roads of your community you are surrounded by boarded up memorable buildings, deteriorating homes, and empty storefronts. The water tower that stands tall for all to see is now covered by rust. While the streets in which you are traveling on show signs of frequent patchwork in an effort to salvage the road. As you pass by what once was your favorite mom and pop’s restaurant you began to reminisce on the time you spent there with loved ones. This has become the story of residents in Boley, Oklahoma; one of the first all black towns in the state.

My grandfather was born in Wisconsin during the Great Depression. He moved back and forth between Chicago, Illinois and Beloit, Wisconsin growing up. His household was impoverished. While culturally German, his family lived in the Polish neighborhood of Chicago. At this time, racial tensions between different Europeans in the United States was still high. “During this time we saw, for example, the Irish “become” white and the “heathen” Asians transformed into model minorities.”2 Carl grew up fast,

Looking back, I was in complete shock that a Native American woman spoke to us. Her speech was powerful, especially her ironic comment on the Caucasian man with the truck. “Remember the guy with the “DO NOT TRESPASS” sticker on his truck? Well…I know a little bit about trespassing myself.” That was the moment that I remember the most because the truth was all that I need to settle my case with the Caucasian

Studs Terkel (1980) relates C. P. Ellis' story about how his experiences organizing a union opened his eyes about how corporations treat minorities, and resulted in a new understanding of the people around him even though he was a former Klansman. I have never been in the Klan or organized a union, but a similar turning point for me came for me when I saw the movie "The Eye of the Storm," about Jane Elliot's experiment with white schoolchildren in Riceville, Iowa. This experiment demonstrated to me how children respond to cultural cues first from their parents and family members, but then through the institutions they are forced to participate in like school; the church; other families and supervisory agencies. If even white children can be taught to discriminate against other white children on something as arbitrary and insubstantial as eye color, then how easy it must be to train them to respond in denigrating ways to people with different skin color, body shapes or language for example, I realized. This changed my perspective on racism and ethnicity and while I have since done much research and believe education is the secret, the way I have decided to implement change in my own life, is to speak out when I hear someone making a denigrating comment.

It all began in the year 1955. This was the year that so many great things shook the foundation of America that will never be forgotten for years and years to come. My name is Joyce Norman I was a military brat that was born and raised in the small town of Fayetteville, North Carolina along with one brother and four sisters. To show a little humor, this is another place like Texas that has bipolar weather from sunny skies with a hint of rain to a giant blizzard that’ll give you a death of pneumonia. Throughout, the years of my life as an African American we heard songs of change, we were insured and inspired in church that change would come some way or another either in the community or in our nation. As the world continued to change I

Throughout my entire life I have heard the word “immigrant” countless times, inmy childhood, in my middle school days, and especially nowadays with the controversial topic taking over social media. I’ve been labelled with this word or image ever since my birth, and yet I still don’t exactly know how I should feel about that.

I attended private schools in California for the majority of my youth, up until I pleaded with my grandmother to allow me to enroll in public school. Well eventually she surrendered and permitted me to attend school for a year in Memphis, TN where my mom resided. Now my first day of public school in the south was extremely confusing. Other children continuously told me “I talk white” which I had never heard before, so I chalked it up to my California accent. But once my year was up I decided to return to California and I asked my grandmother what they meant by the phrase “I talk white.” She explained to me that the majority race in my school was African Americans who couldn’t relate to how I spoke and that people in the south had a southern

I am a spoiled rich kid. I live in an upper middle class town located in one of the prosperous countries in the world. I attend to a competitive school with qualified teachers who care about their students. I have seemingly endless opportunity to participate in my community or gain experience in a job. I have fair skin, living in a world where is being Caucasian is advantageous.

I am a 17 year old Hispanic female who was born in Denver, Co. I now live in the northern part of Denver. I attend an Apostolic church and participate in many of their activities.

Growing up, my first memories are from living in a small town called Topinabee in Michigan. With such a small population, it’s probably safe to say that every resident could be spotted at Ken’s Grocery Market at some point during a given week. Not until I returned to this town to visit family, did I notice something peculiar: a scarcity in black people. Although this detail didn’t really bother me, it got me thinking about the kind of life I might have had if I didn’t move to Joliet, Illinois before starting kindergarten. I most likely would have been sheltered from the diversity I am exposed to today. I like to think that I would be able to adapt just as easily now as I did when I was four, but that can’t be proven.

Walking the halls at school was an overall awkward situation as I attended a predominantly white private school. It was not uncommon for my peers to make jests and snide comments about the oddity of our relationship. I vividly remember the stunned expressions on the faces of my parents and siblings as I explained that my new boyfriend was not white. While my family was accepting of the news, I was warned to not mention my new relationship to my grandfather who would not be quite as understanding as he would only be blinded by his outdated and old fashioned state of mind. Meeting my boyfriend's parents for the first time was unnerving to say the least. I felt like an exhibit at a museum, being observed and analyzed by a group of people who no doubt had already made their own assumptions of my character. I could see from the skeptical look in their eyes that I was nothing more than a vapid and privileged white girl to them. All of these outward opposing forces undoubtedly created friction within the relationship. I found myself questioning if our racial differences were forcing a wedge between our families and friends or if the relationship was worth the criticism we faced. A few short months later, we called it quits, although not entirely due to the racial

The United States of America is known to the rest of the world as the country where people are treated as equals and have the same rights despite race, gender, or religion. Yet, life in America during the 1950s and 1960s told a different story, one of hostility and segregation against those who were Black. Life for Blacks could be best explained by understanding that “Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence” (History.com). African Americans were constantly attacked, killed, and discriminated against purely because of the color of their skin. Additionally,

The school I went to was tiny. In grade school, our class had around twenty-five kids and over the years dwindled to a graduating class of nine. It had to be the least diverse institution I’ve ever been to. I had several Hispanic and Latino classmates, but at least ninety percent of the class was white. There was not a single teacher who wasn’t Caucasian. Maybe I didn’t miss out on any aspect of my education because I have no other perspective to view this from, but it’s my assumption that my worldview is lacking the diversity f So, simply put I have had very few encounters with race-related issues or any ingression of racism in my life. This small and inaccurate representation of society I experienced failed to bring out curiosity in other people’s situations, and how the effects of racial conflict could affect the relationships of people who would otherwise have no reason to have any hostility towards one another

Schools were desegregated in 1968, when I was in the fifth grade. Even though we were now going to the same school, not much else changed where I lived~ at least from my young perspective. I graduated in 1976, and blacks and whites still lived on opposite sides of Highway 77, the road that dissected my town. Affirmative action where I lived meant that a hiring freeze was on, the sentiment being that if the government thought it could tell us who to hire, then we wouldn’t hire anyone. During the day while at school we were friends, but when we went home it was to our side of town. My house was one of the oddities, in that we had our black friends over to dinner and hang out during the day, although we