White American

I sit in the cafeteria surrounded by white people, black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, and others that I do not know their race. I sit there and wonder if people are judging me because I’m white or because of the clothes I am wearing. I engage in conversations with people every day that are different than me and I wonder if they see me differently because of my skin tone. I am a white American female. I grew up in a family where we were all white. I have never been a racist individual…

In fact, it is most likely targeted towards African Americans more than any other race. Kiese Laymon, an English professor from Vassar college in New York wrote a touching article about his upbringing in the United States and the obstacles he had to face along the way. Laymon wrote about how countless times…

of the whole (Anderson, Taylor, Logio, 2015: p. 177). However what about large income gap, such as during the time of slavery? Well a functionalist would take the stance that during the time of slavery there was much inequality among blacks and whites. Whites were prominent, they owned the land, held the power, and the money. In contrast, blacks were slaves and seen as property. Slavery then formed into a form of stratification called a caste system. As time went on, slavery became part of the…

I have always followed the trends, ripped jeans, white sneakers, and I always know what is hot and new. So when I saw how everyone was supporting equality, I realised that I need to do so too in order to stay in style. I honestly did not expect it to be so hard to just go along with what most of my friends were saying for a while, but it turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be. After almost a month of pretending I realised that I too want equality, but not the same equality they…

slaves. Reading Kindred, one has to wonder, has anything really changed? There is still horrible cases of racism and prejudice in the United States, more than 300 years later. Is that due to power and control? Even though we just had our first African American president,…

documentary ‘White People.’ The filmmaker, Jose Antonio Vargas attempts to answer the question of what it means to be white, from a white person’s perspective, and to start a conversation on white supremacy. Responses he received to his question was that being white meant that there was the idea that things belong to you, the perception was that white people ‘good,’ and did not have to deal with prejudices, stereotypes, being hassled by police, or with systematic oppression. White people never…

are not considered White, but I see the connection where affirmative action can be used to move one set of group up the social stratification to create the inequality between groups that are not seen as White. From this article, it made me question who got to decided what it meant to be White, what characteristics constitutes being White and who decide who gets to be White and not? These questions came up because originally, Jews and other European immigrants were not seen as White and over time…

prison, he finally met Elijah Muhammad, where they quickly grew fond and trusted each other. Malcolm ended up becoming the spokesman for the Nation of Islam and became one of their most important and influential ministers. Malcolm taught about the white devil, and about the systemic oppression that he, and others, had to face. Malcolm felt like he was doing the right thing by learning and preaching about Elijah Muhammad’s teachings. Malcolm later talked to the press about President Kennedy’s…

In the article, White Talk, by Alice McIntyre, there is an overarching theme of racism stemming from the idea of white talk. There are several stories, accompanied by reflection from the author supporting the idea that white people try to throw blame on others or distance themselves from the belief of racism. As the text suggests, it is one of the greatest fears of a white person to be labeled as racist and, we as a race, like to come up with excuses to explain that we are exempt from this term…

The Scars of Colonialism Humanities 351 has taught me a lot about the world I live in today. As a student and citizen of this complex world, I never realized how much colonialism has affected our world and even our country as a whole. Colonialism seemed like such a distant concept to me before this course, but it is quite clear that the scars colonialism has left are still affecting the world today. Colonialism and the colonial impulse are technically “dead”, but it has greatly affected the…