Personal Narrative: Racial Differences

Racial reconciliation can be defined as the bringing together of different races; or in other words, embracing diversity. The value of it in my life is immeasurable. I have been extremely blessed to grow up in a time and culture where I personally don’t experience much racism; where I am not held back from pursuing my dreams and passions just because of the color of my skin. It is absolutely crazy to think that if I was born sixty or seventy years ago, my life would be completely different just for the sheer fact that I’m Asian.

Truth to be told: I don’t particularly pay attention to national events or issues. My family is also incapable of comprehending national issues, especially my parents who do not have any level of proficiency in English. My family lives in a world where we go with the flow, but there are issues that I contemplate whether or not I should be involved in, particularly race inequality. Considering the amount of tension between policemen and African-American around the nation, the race to equal treatment is still ongoing.

Too black for the White kids, yet somehow too white for the Black kids, oh the perils of a cappuccino mixed race kid. But it’s true. My life since I was young, at least younger than my eighteen year old self, has been about which group do I most fit in with. Between the four school changes over the course of twelve years, all in white suburban towns I’ve molded myself into an array of characters.

I was born and raised in the small but growing city of Perris, CA. This isn’t the best city out there but it tends to grow on you, and you begin to truly love it for what it is. The people, however, not so much. The community can vary from which part of the city you’re in. That’s because there’s diversity here in Perris. I’m a product of this diversity, being half Mexican and half African American. My parents fell in love after high school and later on began a family. I am the youngest of five. I have two older brothers, an older sister, and an older cousin who lives with us. The order is boy, girl, boy, boy, girl with my cousin being included in there too. We all live in the same house with my parents and are quite close with each other. They all seem to have raised me growing up due to the fact that my parents were busy trying to provide for us. This was a challenge by itself, resulting in lots of house moving and my father being unemployed for six years after losing his job. I never complained about moving because I knew that my parents were doing their absolute best and were working with all that they had and then some. This unquestionably made me adaptable to new environments and gave me a

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.

My parents have always taught me that everyone is equal doesn't matter the race, gender, or economic class. Unfortunely stereotyping is among us we cannot avoid it, we can only try our best to make a difference between millions in the world. At a early age we start to doing it without noticing just having groups at school, the cool kids, the nerds and the popular kids. When I was about nine years old we had to move to a different city, I was sad because that meant a new school and friends. The neighborhood we moved into most of the population was African American and Asians this was a new experience for me and my family. My perspective of African American was that they were bad, untrustworthy and criminals. Sometimes

I interviewed an African American male in his 50s. This means he is in the middle adulthood stage of life. One of the biggest challenges that he faces is being black in America. He seemed to have a whole lot to say about this concept and struggle that he faces. Every day, all over the country, criminal activity is happening at a seemingly higher and higher rate. The evil that inhabits the globe can never be ended. There are few people, still, who choose to try. The police, the government, the news teams, all of these groups of people are supposedly dedicated to awareness and driven to push crime down to a minimum by alerting the people and keeping the peace. A self-governing species as they are, humans are prone to error, fallibility, and imperfection,

I grew up here in the U.S.A and my parents from the U.S also. I live in an ethnically diverse community that the residents show a deeper understanding of their ancestry’s culture. The term of senses that I witness is sight and audio. Since on the daily basis I hear, people speak other languages such as Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, French, and Japanese. In the term of sight, I see who are from Asian background bow to each, African American nod at each other when walking pass, and people just slight smiling at each other. From my culture since I am African American we really do not that many of greeting each other. We would slight nod or smile and make eye contact or for the males who do a doing the handshake and shoulder bump maneuver.

I don’t really remember exactly when I was first truly aware of the concept of race, but I do remember some instances where race came into play in my life. When I was young, I remember my dad being pretty racist. I remember him saying awful things about African Americans, and of course, like any ten-year-old kid would, I thought he was right. Unfortunately, I even became a pretty racist

I have this fear of being demoted because the way I look. I’m in a constant battle with the questions, am I white or am I mexican? I have an identity crisis on my hands, and growing up those questions weren’t any of my concerns. During the duration of my experiences involving race I have been placed into stereotypes that deceive who I really am. I would look too “mexican” to wear that outfit or I would sound too “white” to learn Spanish. Racial categories are both confusing and senseless, yet is a significant part in our society.

First, I’d like to start off this question by saying when I attend Huntington University in the fall of 2016, I plan on starting and participating in a pep band for the home basketball games. As a Horizon Leader, I can offer a different perspective of any stereotypes anyone may have already made. Since I am biracial with White and African American, I am apart of extremely different cultures in my everyday life. As a Horizon Leader I can inform and influence current students on the cultures I am exposed to, that they may not be. As a minority, I feel like it is my job and responsibility to be the representation of the Black community. But not only the black community, but the multiracial community as well, because being multiracial is a culture

The area I live in offers few opportunities for improving race relations; in fact, there is very little racial diversity in my region. Nevertheless, I am ready to promote better race relations at every chance. Yes, the scale on which I work is small, but it still helps to push our society to become more accepting. I have never participated in a large event or social rights movement, but I still try to make my mark.

When I started this assignment, I was puzzled; Am I Chinese or am I Australian. I asked my Asian friends about their racial identity in hopes they could help me, but they didn’t know. It’s almost crazy to say that I didn’t know my own identity. I was born in Australia and both of my parents are of Chinese heritage. And after some intense and informative Google searches, I can now tell you that I am Chinese-Australian. My first language spoken was Cantonese and later I learnt English. But despite the fact that I was born and have lived in Australia my whole life; I have felt the immense pressure of just being a ‘nobody’ in society.

It wasn’t a big moment, in fact nobody else on the course probably noticed it, but it’s a moment that I’ll never forget. I had raced the girl a few weeks ago, and had ended up beating her. At first, I didn’t even know her team was at the meet, and only realized she was there during the race. It was a hot meet, close to 100 degrees and I was probably a little dehydrated. In the middle of the course is a pretty steep hill and it was there that I began to have trouble breathing. By the middle of the hill I was almost hyperventilating, and it was then that this girl caught up to me. She could have easily passed me, and kept on running her race, but instead she slowed down and helped me fix my breathing. We ran the hill together, and soon I was breathing normally again. It was only then that we stopped running together. I beat her again that race, but it didn’t seem quite as important as before. This girl, who I had never really talked to, had stopped her race to help me, even though she could have ran a better time and placed better if she had just kept running.