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Racial Discrimination In America

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On the outside, people do not see me as anything special or unique; I am just a white teenager born into a middle-class family, so many assume that I do not have much of a story. I would tend to agree with those who make this claim. I do not possess any deep, heart-wrenching stories about how me and my family defied racial inequality and discrimination and struggled being different where we lived. We happen to fall into the category of being non-Hispanic whites that nearly 80% of Americans identify themselves as. Though my skin color does not invoke many comments or bizarre questions, my dialect certainly does. You would assume that Georgians, who reside in the “Bible Belt” of the United States would know how to pronounce the name “Micah.” It does not seem all that difficult to enunciate, yet time after time whenever I order food at a restaurant or someone has to read my name, they stumble through it and take a crack at such names like “Mitch”, “Malachi”, or “Mick.” It seems extremely ironic that …show more content…

They are the “other” kids. These are the guys who grew up in the slums and speak Ebonics and the tough guys who worked on a farm since they were five and have a deep Southern accent. I find that when I am conversing with these people, my way of speaking changes drastically. Instead of employing complex vocabulary, I use easy to understand words and phrases in order to minimize the confusion. It is in these situations that I feel most uncomfortable. It nearly makes me flinch every time I talk with these people and commit some grammar foul such as using the word “ain’t.” Though it is the grammatically underdeveloped group that I deal with, the great part about these people is that they do not judge you. Their lines of decent are much lower and so a lot of jokes that you couldn’t get away with elsewhere you can manage to say without

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