My Experience with Racism
Elvis A Navarro
BLS 245
September 23, 2008
My Personal experiences with Racism Racism has always been a big topic in society, even during Jesus Christ time. I believe racism comes from independent thinking and views and how this view from family, friends and society forms us each day. Racism has to do a lot with social status, money, power, looks, sex and much more. Coming from a third world country I can really see the major differences of racism how they vary by culture and education. My experience in the United States as a young boy has formed my racism definition and view of society in general. One of the biggest influences in my life is my father name Evaristo Navarro in terms of racism, he came from an era where marrying a darker skin person was not aloud, not discussed nor appreciated. I came to the United States of America January 1996. I realized that life was much quicker than in my country the Dominican Republic. There were all sorts of people with different cultural backgrounds. When I started to explore other cities and states I realized that racism was much more apparent then it was in the city of New York, and in my heritage culture the Dominican Republic. As a little kid I began to see how different this country was to the Dominican Republic racially and economically. I was amazed at the different cultures and backgrounds people came from. In the Dominican Republic there were people of all colors but people didn’t talk about racial issues. Light colored people in the Dominican Republic would talk bad about a person who was darker than them. When I was a teenager my mother Maria use to tell me and my little brother Eddie that we were suppose to marry blonde girls with blue eyes just for the plain reason that she wanted us to have cute kids with light skin color, this I found very disturbing. Maria as well wanted us to come out with blonde hair and blue eyes. I laughed and told her how such a thing can be possible when my father was
BLS 245
September 23, 2008
My Personal experiences with Racism Racism has always been a big topic in society, even during Jesus Christ time. I believe racism comes from independent thinking and views and how this view from family, friends and society forms us each day. Racism has to do a lot with social status, money, power, looks, sex and much more. Coming from a third world country I can really see the major differences of racism how they vary by culture and education. My experience in the United States as a young boy has formed my racism definition and view of society in general. One of the biggest influences in my life is my father name Evaristo Navarro in terms of racism, he came from an era where marrying a darker skin person was not aloud, not discussed nor appreciated. I came to the United States of America January 1996. I realized that life was much quicker than in my country the Dominican Republic. There were all sorts of people with different cultural backgrounds. When I started to explore other cities and states I realized that racism was much more apparent then it was in the city of New York, and in my heritage culture the Dominican Republic. As a little kid I began to see how different this country was to the Dominican Republic racially and economically. I was amazed at the different cultures and backgrounds people came from. In the Dominican Republic there were people of all colors but people didn’t talk about racial issues. Light colored people in the Dominican Republic would talk bad about a person who was darker than them. When I was a teenager my mother Maria use to tell me and my little brother Eddie that we were suppose to marry blonde girls with blue eyes just for the plain reason that she wanted us to have cute kids with light skin color, this I found very disturbing. Maria as well wanted us to come out with blonde hair and blue eyes. I laughed and told her how such a thing can be possible when my father was