Reflective Essay: Gender Differences

I am from a small town in Georgia called Albany where the population is majority African-American, as I grew up I became very used to being in the minority. At the time, I had no idea of the differences between people in regards to races. I had no understanding of the fact that only one out of every ten people in Albany were even Caucasian like myself. I saw everyone around me as the same, because I had not been taught a difference. Unlike with race, I did understand the differences in gender between males and females from an early age. I had been taught an understanding of how to behave as a male and that I should not behave like someone of the opposite sex. In terms of race, I never thought twice about being white or of the fact that I was not African-American in a majority African-American town. No one ever treated me differently because I was not part of the majority or because I was Caucasian, so naturally I saw myself as one with everyone else. My parents never even told me that I was Caucasian, I never needed to know that information rowing up until I …show more content…
In terms of race, as a child no one looked at anyone differently than someone else, everyone was equal. But as an adult, I have found that people do believe that everyone is different just based off of racial qualities. In terms of gender, as a child I was taught from birth to be a certain type of male and to act a certain way because people cared about that. When I grew up, people stopped caring about how I acted because at a certain point I had already learned what they wanted me to know. Both ways, with race and gender, people treated me differently because of it when I was a child compared to when I was adult. I believe that the way people become socialized always differs from childhood to adulthood, but the ways in which they differ may vary from person to