Narrative Essay On Race And Ethnicity

As a young kid growing up in the inner city of Baltimore, MD, the people surrounding me mirrored my complexion. Attending Catholic Church and Catholic School, growing up was a part of my family’s culture. Awareness of my race and ethnicity, stated in my earliest days at school. Although, majority of my childhood interactions were with other African American children, I had no problem creating friendships with other children who did not mirror my image. When you are a kid, you pay less attention to the differences among one another, but more at the toys and games you and friends like to play. In middle school I had a white social studies and religion teacher, tell my mother, that I was going to have trouble getting into high school with my grades. I remember sitting in the parent teacher conference, feeling different. I did fully understand all of what was said in the parent teacher conference, until later
I believe that attending this high school is the highlight of me being aware of my race and others around me. In history class, white teachers briefly taught about black history and how our people were slaves. We would read about how we became slaves and then became free. They then would immerse the remainder of the course in European History. I knew then that the context of my race and ethnicity was more complex than any other person outside of my race could teach me. Although diverse, the black kids in school were always in detention or in some sort of trouble and the white kids were allowed to set trashcans on fire and free to fight in the cafeteria. There was a clear difference in treatment with the different races at school, but my interactions with remained the same in middle school. The culture for a black kid who wanted to go to college, was to attend an HBCU and so I