Personal Reflection On Racism And Prejudice

This class has given me a lot of incite as to how society perceives me, and in turn this has allowed me to take a personal evaluation of myself. After becoming aware of the prejudice that was intentionally targeted at myself and my peers of minority, I have changed the way I see myself in term of how I have defied the statistics and the laws that were implemented to prevent me from pursuing a higher education. I became involved in sports and heavily invested into my education. Yet I still feel that I have to be careful in every situation that I present myself in because of the way society is set up, making the mistakes of people of color critical to their chances and opportunities for success. I knew that racism and prejudice existed but I …show more content…
The support system of football along with the fortune to live in a two parent household put distance between me the issue of criminalization largely due in part that I had no time to get entangled into any crime due to ivesting all my time into sports and academics. My parents made it very clear to me that the police are here to help but more often than not they hurt rarher than help. They told me that gangs were a double edged knife, if you don’t die due to the activities of the gang, than you die from the bullet of an officer. I took this to heart,but there have been instances where teens my age in the neighborhood thought of a gang as a family and decided to join due to their lack of a stable home and/or family life. My race approximates me too the criminalization since it makes it more for me to likely to be deemed a criminal due to the implied correlation between darker complexion and a higher crime rate. Knowing about the possibility of being a young Latino man that can have a run in with the law over the smallest infraction has made me take a lot more precautions such as not wearing very baggy pants or anything that can give an officer the idea that I am a criminal. I have learned that dressing and speaking appropriately help ease the storm of a police encounter but they do not make it any more likely to prevent you from being targeted after a brush in with the law. Learning about criminalization of youth on a racialized basis has given me the awareness necessary to evade the likelihood of an ill-encounter happening through subtle changes in how i speak like with a calm tone and speaking proper English, not wearing any “gang” colors to prevent mistaken identity and to make sure that the people close to me are all aware of this daily