Situate Yourself

Situate Yourself I have never really noticed my oppressions and privileges until we did the Privilege exercise I didn’t notice how little things were thought to be privileges. I knew my life had barriers such as my race and but I figured the way people treated because of my skin tone was “normal.” I was born in Denton, Texas when my mom was only 16 years old. My life growing up was different then somebody whose parents were 25 or 30 my mother had to grow up fast to raise a baby. My dad of course was still a teen and was working two jobs just to support my family. Although my parents were Hispanic teens with a baby the last thing they wanted was to be trapped in this “average life for Hispanics.” My parent’s oppressions where what motivated them to move and start a new life with new perspectives and not let their barriers of their race and class determines what they could do. That being said I was raised in small town Sanger, Texas population at the time and up until 2006 was about 4,500. I started kindergarten here so the people I grew up with were the same ones I graduated with. The majority race was of course white and there were a total of five Hispanics and two African Americans. Since we were all so little race didn’t seem to matter, there was never really discrimination until middle school when we began playing other schools in sports whose majority were Hispanics and African Americans. They would look at us hanging out with the white kids and say rude things like white-wannabes; you know you’re not white right? The one I can remember very vividly is when we were playing basketball and on the court this Hispanic girl says to me “you know you aint white right? Why you trying to pretend to be something you’re not, you’re a disgrace to the all the Mexicans.” That night I went home and cried because I had no idea I was a disgrace and I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I knew both languages and my culture and traditions were still a big part of my