An event that stuck with me is the arrest of an African man staying with a family friend. He was out for a walk on a bike path, listening to his Walkman and dancing around, which caught the attention of the police nearby. They approached him, tried to talk to him and question him, and ...
I grew up in Norway, South Carolina. We immediately noticed that we had a lot of blacks, in that community. And that they were treated differently. Our school, I was 9th grade when we had our first blacks to come to school with us, and they rode our bus. They sat 'em on the front ...
Kate, of Chinese origin, remembers when she first went to elementary school and realized that she did not look like most of her White classmates out in the New York suburb she grew up in. She saw that all her classmates had blond hair and blue eyes and she remembers wanting those features for a ...
When I first came to the US, I lived in an apartment complex filled with other international families. I never really thought about race or the fact that I was different at first. The first time I probably felt out of place was the first day of school when I was in 5th grade. I ...
When I first arrived in the United States, my obstacles to making friends were primarily cultural. Coming from a truly multicultural society, it was hard adapting to a culture where people divided themselves according to historical ethnic backgrounds. Having had a teacher in high school who espoused the justness of the Nation of Islam, for ...
One incident that I think my parents found kind of fascinating was when I was four years old. That was the first time we traveled outside of Pakistan, and we went to the States, to the UK, and Turkey. I was four years old and I bought my first Barbie. I chose it myself and ...
I grew up in a very small town. All the members of the town were White and Catholic. If they weren’t Catholic, they lived in the next town over, but they were still White. As a child I probably would have had to travel thirty miles in any direction to see someone who was of ...
I lived in a pretty rural community when I was growing up, and every quarter or so, the Klan would come by and leave a magazine or some propaganda letting you know, the Klan is here, how to join, and I can even remember when I was small they would do marches and stuff like ...
In 1st grade, I told my black teacher, in front of white teachers, a fellow black student called me a nigger. They all gave me astonished looks and later my black teacher was upset with me and I couldn’t understand what I had done. She told me that word was not something to repeat, especially ...
My first short-lived romance was when I was three or four years old with a little girl I met in the mall. We called each other girlfriend and boyfriend while our parents watched us play and hold hands. Without the photograph I don't think my parents would have ever told me my first girlfriend was ...
