My African American Heritage

As I sat nervously in the back seat of our Toyota Highlander, I looked down to my brand new Reeboks. It was the first day of 2nd grade, and I was on my way to a new school. I was going from a class of students of Jamaican, Indian, and Dominican heritage to a school that was a mere 5% African American. It was an absolute shock to me.
I knew I was different, and that fact hung like a cloud over my time at school. My classmates were proud of their European heritages and their families. They spoke of their parents’ established, white collar careers, while my father was a clerk at the local grocery store chain, and newspaper delivery man in the early mornings. They spoke of their family legacies, and their family trees reaching into the 1600s. I was the grandchild of an woman who had come to America without much assurance that she could establish a better future for her children. They spoke of their parents’ college educations and travels all over the world. My father had finished high school in
At Grandma’s house, Creole was the only language we could speak. Never having the opportunity to go to school herself, she still taught me how to count in Creole and instilled in me the value of education. As we waited for either my mother or my father to get off of work, she told me stories from her poverty stricken times in Haiti, and I formulated my aspirations for the future. Aspirations were her efforts to come to America were worthwhile, and I could proudly overcome the clutches of poverty through education. It was in her home that I decided that my future would be the future that she imagined for her children and the children of her