Being American: A Thing of Pride
Multicultural Paper
Multicultural Paper I grew up in an all-white neighborhood in the 1960s, in Annapolis, MD. The only caveat to that was that there were many families of the Jewish faith there also. The neighborhood was one of the few of the time open to “Jews”. I was not aware of the restrictions common to that time. Many of my friends and those of my middle brother were Jewish. My brother had friends who were black from grade school. I never thought anything of the superficial differences in some of our friends because they were simply friends and we all played like kids, innocent of the adult prejudices. Children have to be taught to be racists by their parents. There were no families of color living in our neighborhood. That was evident to me at the time and was sometimes talked about in an innocent way. To this day, out of 500 homes, there might only be a handful of families of color. It was and is a solid middle to upper middle neighborhood with homes starting in the mid 350K range on up to over 1 million for homes on the water. This did price many families of color out since income has generally been lower for families of color. It’s just a fact. The neighborhood was open to anyone who could afford a home. When I was in third grade, integration was in full swing and I remember my parents coming home from a PTA meeting talking about other parents screaming and yelling about an issue. They never told me what was going on. Evidently, the all black elementary school was being closed and all the kids were being pushed into my school. As a result, I was bused to a church for the next two years as there was not enough room in the school. At the time, I was unaware of what was going on and did not notice any change in the diversity of the school. When I look back at class pictures during the grades before and after, I do see a higher percentage of people of color. There were children of color at the school prior to the forced
Multicultural Paper I grew up in an all-white neighborhood in the 1960s, in Annapolis, MD. The only caveat to that was that there were many families of the Jewish faith there also. The neighborhood was one of the few of the time open to “Jews”. I was not aware of the restrictions common to that time. Many of my friends and those of my middle brother were Jewish. My brother had friends who were black from grade school. I never thought anything of the superficial differences in some of our friends because they were simply friends and we all played like kids, innocent of the adult prejudices. Children have to be taught to be racists by their parents. There were no families of color living in our neighborhood. That was evident to me at the time and was sometimes talked about in an innocent way. To this day, out of 500 homes, there might only be a handful of families of color. It was and is a solid middle to upper middle neighborhood with homes starting in the mid 350K range on up to over 1 million for homes on the water. This did price many families of color out since income has generally been lower for families of color. It’s just a fact. The neighborhood was open to anyone who could afford a home. When I was in third grade, integration was in full swing and I remember my parents coming home from a PTA meeting talking about other parents screaming and yelling about an issue. They never told me what was going on. Evidently, the all black elementary school was being closed and all the kids were being pushed into my school. As a result, I was bused to a church for the next two years as there was not enough room in the school. At the time, I was unaware of what was going on and did not notice any change in the diversity of the school. When I look back at class pictures during the grades before and after, I do see a higher percentage of people of color. There were children of color at the school prior to the forced