Common App Essay
Halfway down the Mississippi River, between St Louis and Cape Girardeau, lies a sleepy town called Sainte Genevieve. Proudly labeled the “Oldest settlement West of the Mississippi,” it is rich with heritage. The town of roughly 4,200 people feels like it has been frozen in the eighteenth century, but not only by architecture and culture; Sainte Genevieve lacks modern ethnical and racial diversity.
According to United States Census data, Sainte Genevieve is 96.2% Caucasian as of 2010. At the time of this writing, there are only five people of color at Ste. Genevieve High School, a school of about five hundred. This incredible majority results in misunderstanding and a misguided racism among many of the people in Sainte Genevieve toward minorities. The town has a deep past of racism dating all the way back to before the civil war and in the 1950’s when all of the people of color were forced to evacuate almost overnight. In my experiences today, because they never interact with different groups, people develop the idea that those peoples are different or lesser. These ideas have very little to no experiential basis; they are founded only upon peer pressured thoughts and blind following of the racists in their life. …show more content…
The people of Ste. Genevieve are completely happy with their isolationism, which makes it very difficult to introduce new people into the environment. People do not like going where they do not feel welcome, so it has become a cycle -- the natives do not accept outsiders, the outsiders stop coming, the natives understand them less because they never interact with them, and then the gap becomes larger and larger as the chain continues. In order to solve this racial and ethnical divide, the people of Ste. Genevieve need to want to change. Once the mindset of the community shifts, we can begin to make progress toward equal opportunity and
Halfway down the Mississippi River, between St Louis and Cape Girardeau, lies a sleepy town called Sainte Genevieve. Proudly labeled the “Oldest settlement West of the Mississippi,” it is rich with heritage. The town of roughly 4,200 people feels like it has been frozen in the eighteenth century, but not only by architecture and culture; Sainte Genevieve lacks modern ethnical and racial diversity.
According to United States Census data, Sainte Genevieve is 96.2% Caucasian as of 2010. At the time of this writing, there are only five people of color at Ste. Genevieve High School, a school of about five hundred. This incredible majority results in misunderstanding and a misguided racism among many of the people in Sainte Genevieve toward minorities. The town has a deep past of racism dating all the way back to before the civil war and in the 1950’s when all of the people of color were forced to evacuate almost overnight. In my experiences today, because they never interact with different groups, people develop the idea that those peoples are different or lesser. These ideas have very little to no experiential basis; they are founded only upon peer pressured thoughts and blind following of the racists in their life. …show more content…
The people of Ste. Genevieve are completely happy with their isolationism, which makes it very difficult to introduce new people into the environment. People do not like going where they do not feel welcome, so it has become a cycle -- the natives do not accept outsiders, the outsiders stop coming, the natives understand them less because they never interact with them, and then the gap becomes larger and larger as the chain continues. In order to solve this racial and ethnical divide, the people of Ste. Genevieve need to want to change. Once the mindset of the community shifts, we can begin to make progress toward equal opportunity and