Black. That is the most dominate trait about me. It is the first thing people notice when they see me. I can change my hair or my clothes, but I will always be black. There are plenty of people who also fit into this category with me: the notorious “Black Community.”
In a word, the black community is diverse. There are the stereotypical black people. The people you hear about on the news. Those who steal, shoot, sell drugs, have “baby mama drama”, and use the “N-word” in every other sentence. However, there is another side to this coin.
This is where I come in. My role in this community along with the other portion of the black community who are in the same subset as me is penetrating this negative light that is beaming down on all of us. I have never held a gun. I have never stolen anything. I have never laid a hand on any drug that wasn’t prescribed to me or didn’t have “cold and flu” in the title. I don’t have any kids and I don’t plan on having any anytime soon, and I don’t feel comfortable saying the “N-word” when I’m by myself, let alone when I’m around other people. All in all, my role in the black community is to prove to everyone else that that one perception does not apply to everyone.
The black community is one of many communities that I belong to. This community as a whole is looked down upon, for understandable reasons. However, there are exceptions like me, who demonstrate without a doubt that one general observation does not describe us all. Therefore, I describe the black community as diverse.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
Middle-class blacks in the study also sought to maintain ties with the black community. In contrast to the other two neighborhoods, Lakeview blacks had to actively seek out black social organizations as a result of the suburb’s majority-white makeup. Finally, suburban…
- 1442 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays -
Today, the number of deaths including black people in custody has continued and black people are disproportionally stopped and searched on streets. After the case of Macpherson life for the black community was expected to change, however to some it is known that the changes have been extremely disappointing. Black people feel they are less likely to get a decent job, they feel they are treated disproportionally by police, by being stopped and searched and within communities (Janet et al,…
- 2043 Words
- 9 Pages
Better Essays -
On a warm summer day, John, a black man was walking on a crowded towns street. He was walking along the sidewalk when a white man bumped into him. The white man was upset and started yelling. John tried to apologize, but the man only got even more upset and started hitting the black man. John got beat up for something that happened on accident.…
- 713 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Finally in Activism Through Social Media On Newsela by Ernie Suggs, he talks about how african americans are perceived completely different on social media than would a caucasian. In this article Ernie says that just because someone is an African American they are immediately put into a category. No matter how they live, what they do for work, or how much money they make, they are all segregated into one category. And to be quite frank i believe this statement wholeheartedly. The message of who a person is, is already corrupted by society's labels and stereotypes just from having a certain skin tone.…
- 414 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
In our society races are given a general identity some are good some are bad, many traits of the identity cause stereotypes and prejudice against the races of America. African American men and women have been negatively identified and this has caused discrimination and hate towards them as a race. From slavery to present day African American males have been looked upon as savage, violent, threatening and a menace to society sexually overlooking the efforts of people such as Malcom X and martin Luther King also groups Alpha Phi Alpha who have created programs to help the youth and put them on a path to success, The Black Panther Party that was identified as a menace to society but was only created to aid the black community in a time when they…
- 2361 Words
- 10 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Growing up in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, one would notice that the two dominant races that occupied the city were the blacks and the whites. Being a part of the black community, I had always thought it was a very close knit one. In elementary school, all my friends were black, I wanted to marry a black man, and have black kids. I talked black, acted black, even dressed black. I didn’t have a problem with white people, I just figured that I had nothing in common with them. I was raised one way, and they were raised another. I spoke one way, and they spoke completely different. Being black has always been important to me because I saw us…
- 1466 Words
- 6 Pages
Good Essays -
Although there has been moderate progress and many attempts to further unify races over the past decades, there is still a considerable division. It appears that Blacks will be acknowledged as being less important and treated with little respect in our western society. "He who is less than just is less than man" (55). As we have learned from the history of racism in the Deep South, people treat other races poorly not because of a person’s social and moral traits but because of the colour of their skin. This notion is evident in the book, where people refer to it as a “Lack of Unity” (32), showing that there is a clear division between white and black people in all aspects of life.…
- 809 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
As a child, being black was never an anomaly for me. I was educated on the issues of white privilege and how black people are often targeted in a world riddled with injustice; my family on my mother’s side hailed from the deep south, so my grandparent’s lives were obviously filled with the turmoil of the racist south. While equality was always something on my mind, even as a child, being born (and raised for a semi-short while) in New York opened my eyes to the many cultures, religious, personalities, genders, and sexualities of the world. Despite this, the general heteronormative nature of the black community (and the bigotry that can spawn from it) worried me especially in a time where I was still learning about myself.…
- 647 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
I can remember riding in the car on my home from school as a little girl and listening to the lyrics of the song titled Black Butterfly by Deniece Williams and wondering to myself “ Is she talking about me?!” Much of my ethno-cultural heritage is tied up in the fact that I was born in the south as a l black girl and am part of a family that had an active pioneer in the civil rights movement in our mist. I have been raised to always believe that I was just as smart as, just as pretty as, and just as capable as any white child I might be in class with and it was my duty to the world to show that fact.…
- 549 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
As a criminal justice professor, I am often engaged in conversations about crime in the black community. Many ask the reason so many black men are incarcerated; why are black people less concerned with black on black crime yet overly concerned when a black person is killed by an individual of another race? The questions seem to be neverending, especially during the current uprisings related to the police killings of unarmed black men across America.…
- 588 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Developing in today's society and culture, I recently realized what it truly means to be a black women living in America. Going to a high school where I am a minority by all meanings of the word, I was not aware of how I was being perceived by other. This unknown ignorance helped me go through my first year of high school without faltering in knowing what I thought I stood for. My lack of understanding my role in society was why I felt a sense of false serenity about the stability of the world around me. It was not until the exposure of modern discrimination, which crept its way into the news or on social media, that I began noticing how my values in time of crisis for both the black and female community varied greatly from the students around…
- 496 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Matriculating from a child into a young lady, the color of my skin often times influenced how I felt about myself and who I could be as an individual in society. As I sat in the front of the class at a predominately white school or walked down the hallways, I anticipated the moment that I would yet again be called another racial name- sometimes from those who looked similar to me but did not understand the essence of their doings. Reaching my final year in middle school, I began to define myself in a way that encompassed the names I was called. Instead of describing myself as the intellect I was or by my astounding level of accomplishments, I defined myself as someone who must be unfortunate to be African-American. Witnessing very few African-American women being presented in a positive manner in the news, learning my entire history and heritage in a single textbook chapter, and hearing demeaning words merely because of my dark skin tone inhibited me from seeing what roles I was capable of having in society. I often times asked…
- 783 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Applying sociological academic explanations, and concerns to the above question from those nine individuals provide real evidence. Many shoot form the hip in pawn the problem to black being black. All the perspective has the world in this research. But, Symbolic Interactionist emphasize, minority groups, and social class is a Barrack’s Obama type of symbol that affects people's behavior and how the views things; and those in power like the police have a habit of seeing only what they want to. That is why African-American across the nations are already been views in a damaging way in the eyes of the peers. The one cohesion all perspective has in comments is their focus on the problem at large, which is race, because when conversing about racial…
- 633 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
For the past 8 years, I’ve lived in a centrally Caucasian dominant area, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Starting in about 10th grade, I started to become interested in how many of my peers and friends in this area perceive black people and black culture as monolithic: they stereotypically imagine that all blacks are lazy, speak Ebonics, and "have an attitude". Throughout the course of my high school education, I was treated as "one of the exceptions", meaning that to my white peers, and even black peers, I don't seem like other black people. Growing up, I heard phrases like “you don’t talk like a black person”, “you don’t dress like a black person”, and “you don’t act like a black person”. I’m perceived as an “oreo”. Someone who is “black on the outside, and white on the inside”.…
- 637 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
From the beginning of American society, black people have been viewed as a liability rather than an asset. Even today, one can still see the lasting effects of prejudice and discrimination against the black race. If America is considered the melting pot of countries why is it that there is a problem of acceptance, most commonly with that of African Americans? Too often, black people are forced to pretend to be something they are not to make white people "comfortable" around them. Likewise, too often black people give in to the notion that they have to live by the stereotypes placed upon them in order to get along well in society. It is because of the cycle of different stereotypes that it is harder for some black people to get along as well as some white people in contemporary society. It is apparent that in spite of social "progress", black people continue to be a viewed as a problem to society because of judgment based on the stereotypes that have been placed upon them, rather than who they are as a people.…
- 1242 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays