Reflective Essay: Understanding My Racial Identity

Understanding my racial identity was always a challenge for me until college. From kindergarten until second grade my younger brother and I attended a very small private school in Georgia. The entire school consisted of about fifty students, and out of those fifty students there were only three Black students, including my brother and I. During that time I began to understand that I was different, I knew I was brown, and they were not but I did not fully understand what our differences meant. My parents always tell me how friendly and sweet I was until second grade, they would say that I would hug everyone and I was always a joy to be around until one particular day. I went to hug a girl in my class and she pushed me away because her mother told her not to hug people like me. My parents said that I came home from school confused and upset by what she said, and from then on my personality towards white people drastically …show more content…
Coming into Middle School I would dress very preppy, I wore nothing but Abercrombie, Aeropostale,Hollister and American Eagle. My two favorite types of shoes at the beginning of middle school were UGGS and Birkenstocks, but little did I know that liking a particular brand of clothing would bring so many issues into my life. My entire sixth grade year I was called oreo, whitey, etc. I would fight with my dad ever morning so that he would not make me wear the collared shirts or the slacks to class, and finally he asked why I did not want to wear the clothes in my closet and I told him I was tired of being called white all the time. That night my mom and sat me down and told me simply not to worry about what people said about me, but being in middle school it is hard to do that. I enjoyed wearing preppy clothes, but at that time I could not get over what people were saying and that caused me to entire a tornado of identity