Personal Narrative: He Has Black Skin

“He has black skin” was my description of my African American classmate in the fourth grade. Our new teacher wanted us to describe each other so she could get to know her future students and, since we had known each other since kindergarten, it was something we were not used to. I cannot remember why but I chose to describe my classmate’s skin color as black, for which I was called a racist. While I had heard that word before on television, this was the first time I had ever truly understood what that word meant. I had read about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, but I never knew how it directly affected me until I was unknowingly identifying one of my oldest friends by the color of his skin. Even though it has been almost a decade since, I still feel the need to apologize again for my actions. While I feel shame for what I had done, I know it isn’t …show more content…
Everyday, we hear how the superficial differences between races can lead to segregation, riots and even murder; however, the most common place to find racism is on television. When we flip through TV channels, we can see stereotypes and segregation between shows as casts mostly consist of almost all African American or Caucasian actors. This kind of division of audiences isn’t more clear in political ads, especially in this current election year. In the ads used for each candidate, especially in Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad “Show Up,” they use persuasive and sympathetic techniques to hide an emphasis towards a certain racial group.
In “Hillary Clinton: Show Up,” the advertisement group hide this intention behind their argument that if voters side with Clinton, they will be saving the