My cultural background is Native American, Scottish, Irish, and Canadian; I have been taught a lot about our cultural background throughout my life. I have also been lucky in the area I grew up. I grew up in a very culturally diverse area. Many of my friends from elementary school through high school were from many different cultures. I grew up eating food at friends house that to this day I still cant pronounce.…
When I was young i never knew my background or where I was from. I knew I was born and raised in Louisiana but i wanted to know more about my past family. My grandfather always tells me that on my his side of the family it´s mainly russian, but on my grandmother´s side it´s mainly french. My mom, aunts, and uncles can all speak fluent french because my great grandmother did not know english so they had to learn it. The basics of my family is cajun french, or creole.…
The mantra, "breathe in your nose and out your mouth," was the only thing running through my head as I attempted to complete the last half mile of my first cross-country meet, and at least it was running. I on the other hand, was not. I had started the race completely confident in my ability to run three miles, but after a grueling two and a half laps of tripping over tree roots, splashing through mud, and struggling over an enormous hill that marked the last quarter of the lap, I was just ready to go home and take a shower. When my feet crossed onto the threshold of the track where the finish line was positioned, I observed quite a few things. One, the conspicuous red timer was flashing numbers well into the mid-forties range. Two, at least half of the buses in the parking lot seemed long gone. My third and final realization did not occur to me until after I crossed the finish line. As I came to a stop near the water cooler, it finally dawned on me that I had concluded the race in last place.…
Language was not always easy to speak, write, and understand when I first moved here from India. Understanding two different culture shocks from Indian culture and American culture, was surely one of the toughest part about moving to the United States was. Everything was very different from my skin color to the way I spoke English. Every time I passed by people in the hallway, everyone would stare at me because they all knew about “the new girl from India.” Slowly as months passed by I started realizing the difference in culture, lifestyle, and behavior. Looking back before I moved to the US, growing up with a single parent impacted my view in society. My mom always taught me to be the hardest working person in the room. She always told me…
When I was a child, my favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz. Out of all of Dorothy’s friends, the Cowardly Lion was probably my least favorite. He had gone to ask the Wizard for courage and I didn’t understand why. Others wanted tangible items such as a brain or a heart and yet he wanted courage. I had thought of courage as something that you just dug down and found within yourself when you needed it not something not just a material thing that was necessary to live like a brain or a heart. Courage is something I always felt I had within, but it was confirmed within myself when my school hit major news over racial issues.…
I lived in a small town named Harlem, and it was nice in the summer, but it ends up getting too hot in the summers. Most people here are people hanging out windows, people on fire escapes, and anywhere trying to get a cool breeze. Harlem was a town that you could get a job for a day and that's it pretty much it. I loved playing the saxophone, so I tried to use that to get money but it didn't work as well as I planned. My dad says I should get a part-time job, but I wanted full time to get extra money. I finally got a job at this business and I finally thought it would have been great. Then after awhile, it started to get harder to wake up and get to work. Then I meet Fats and that's when everything went south. Fats was someone that had a bootleg…
“Wow! I did not know there were black Americans”. During the month I was in China, I heard this or a variant of it jokily said to me numerous times. I never took offense to it since I understood most of the media from America that came to China featured individuals who did not look like me. Furthermore, for those Americans who had come to China, they were mostly white and had come for business. While in China, I was able to share my experience as an African-American; I always found enjoyment sharing my experiences and it seemed to me those around me found enjoyment learning about a different side of America. With me sharing my experiences, they were being able to understand the diverse nature of the United States.…
First off, I was born in Gallup, New Mexico in the McKinley County Indian Hospital, in 1976, to a half Zuni/Spanish native, and a Hispanic Apache mother, and growing up I saw and suffered a lot of abuse, and a very unstable youth. My father and mother divorced when I was a baby, and my stepfather was very abusive, to me and my mother for many years, until he was arrested for killing my mother's best friend. After that, I saw the effect that abuse had on my mother, and she became a victim of drug and alcohol addiction, so eventually my little brother, sisters, and I was taking into Child Protective Custody. We were separated at first, and I had a few good foster parents, and a couple really evil ones, but eventually I was placed with a family who allowed us all to be…
I lived in Hollywood, FL for nine years to long. It was circumstantial how I wound up there. It was not a pleasant experience. I went to Florida niave. I thought that the blacks from different parts of the world got along. I was in for a rude awakening. My family goes back to be an American every since colonization. I felt like an outsider in America an I’m a veteran. I experienced prejudice and stereo typing from both the men an the women. I t would pain me to see how other black Americans were treated. Most of the black americans families migrated from Mississippi, Alabama and the Carolins. The majority of the Islanders lived in their own commities like Mirramor, Little Hatti and…
Warm dim lights bounced around the inside of a classroom like air molecules inside a hot air balloon. It was different outside. Crystal clear rain drops fell from the sky endlessly. The reason why we had recess inside instead of outside. Sitting with friends in a circle, we played with lego blocks while building the most breathtaking structures.…
When we got to my house, my friend was there. My younger sister wanted to go hang out with her friend down the street, so he and I went down the street to bring her while Leann and Kyanna stayed at my house. When we got to the neighbors yard, I could feel eyes peering at me through the window. My sister’s best friend came outside and I felt the same look again. Someone was definitely watching us. We heard movement in the house. Rushed movement, like someone was afraid. My sister’s best friend went back in the house to find out what was wrong. She came back out and told us that her family was afraid my friend was going to rob them. My friend was an African American and people often stereotyped African Americans to be robbers. The girl’s family…
The news vans from a dozen different television stations were gathered around the massive crowd of people outside of what was once the closed down and abandoned Museum in Coutts. Coutts is a Small town located just above the border into the United States. I saw the reporters interviewing the people looking to get their side of the story as they waited for the event to be underway the grand opening of the museum of native American history. One reporter was interviewing a tall Native American who wore a name tag that said I am Blackfoot on it. The man said to the news reporter “I remember 3 years ago when Mel started this petition to reopen this museum, we all thought he was crazy, he would come around with these little name tags…
Part I: In some ways I guess you could say I am not very cultured, in that sense there is not a wide variety of cultural influences around me. With that being said, my family still has a large assortment of different traditions we do from decorating the tree at Christmas to going up to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving and making the same dishes every year. The area I live in is just not very diverse, it never has been. I live in Alpharetta, Georgia where the majority is white people and somewhat upper class. I consider my family to be middle class but more on the upper side. We live in a nice house in a safe neighborhood near very good schools. I went to the same high school for three years before a new…
Out of all experiences I've had, the one that has been meaningful to me is taking my last yearbook pictures for my senior year. I wasn't taking pictures for a mugshot and a crime scene photographer wasn’t taking pictures of my lifeless body. I reached a milestone in my life that many people told me I couldn’t achieve. Though I hadn’t walked across the stage for graduation yet, it felt good to do something that many people told me I wouldn’t ever experience being a young black girl in America. The reason why this specific moment was meaningful to me is because it made me think about the many people my age who never got to experience this; the feeling of being ALMOST done with high school. I could've been like many African American people my…
During the 1730’s the Cherokees’ and Great Britain formed ties together, even though they were trying to get better the Indians did not have a very good relationship with the new whites that were coming in on their land. Since all of this happened, they were fighting over what land was theirs, what they were able to trade, and loyalty through the Indian tribes. The Cherokees’ had trouble keeping up their traditions and culture due to the fact that they were adapting to the white culture.…