This section talks about a journalists experience growing up in a white world while being black. When the journalist was a small child they saw there first experience of racial segregation. It was a drinking fountain labeled specifically for people of color. At the time, they didn’t know that, because they were of a young age. The journalist saw racial segregation the more the progressed in life. For example, one day there white friend asked if they have been to this one amusement place. The friend was surprised to find out that the journalist wasn’t allowed to go their. Before that conversation, the friend didn’t even realize that he didn’t see any people of color there. Fast forwarding to the journalist’s young adulthood, they heard the phrase “show my color”. That phrase means that a person almost acted like their race’s stereotype. For example, a black male saying that means they were almost violent or malicious. Those are negative stereotypes that make black people seem dangerous or thuggish. Eventually in the their life they saw the abolishment of segregation. There were still problems pertaining to race/ethnicity. In the schools students came up with the concept of “bad” and “good”. To be good you had to have a white skin tone like whites or Asians; the opposite was the same for being bad. The students who were normally seen as bad were the black and Latinx students. When trying to act like a “good” student, you would be seen as “trying to act white”. Segregation was still in practice in the retirement homes. The journalist put his dad in a nice mostly white retirement home that had their own black group. One night people put sheets of paper that said “KKK” on the member’s windshield. Some tried justifying it by saying that they just felt left out. What was most likely the case was old racism still being alive. The main problem with racism is the fact that it will only be apart of our society. I’ve been lucky to not have experience extreme acts of racism. One incident of racism happened to my older brother E. E lives in a state that is on the south east side of the country with his girlfriend J. One day E and J were grocery shopping when a man started following them around the store. To simply put it, he thought my brother was going to steal something. My brother is about average male height with a mostly non-threatening physique. He had no tattoos, no piercings, wasn’t lighting a cigarette, or anything of the sort. He thought that E was going to steal based on his brown skin color. Nothing much happened other than being followed around the store. Racism lives in our society and I think it will always be a part of our society.
4/10/2019
Sociology Blog 