Connor Croasmun

AFAM 2000

Dr. Lee

8/25/18

Race in My Life

Trying to remember is difficult, but I shall try to recollect my memories as a child. I have

a stack of memories already about this paper, and I hope that what I tell is accurate. Race was

never a concept discussed with the children, or really discussed at all between members of my

family. I remember being fairly young and I remember many of the conversations my parents

had with me and my siblings, as well as other adults. I do remember the first time I encountered

the idea of race however, and it was on a trip to my grandparents in Florida when I was younger.

On our way down from our home in Pennsylvania, my family decided to stop in some city, most

likely Charleston or Savannah. We were in an art museum and I remember being especially

bored, but at some point, we must have come across an exhibit on slave photos. I had never seen

anything like it in my life, and every photo consisted of someone who seemed different than I. I

believe I asked my mother about it and she proceeded to tell me that it was because these people

were of a different race than us, but that is all the more I remember of that conversation. I still

cannot tell whether not being made aware of the differences between all humans in my childhood

was good or bad. Maybe it is neither, but I might find the answer one day.

I do, however, remember quite clearly the first time I found race to be a divisive and

oppressive attribute of a group of people. That is not to say that a person is naturally better off or

worse off than another because of how they look, but how unnaturally what has happened is. It

was in history in middle school. We had come to the chapter that talked about the Civil War, and
how slavery was one cause of it. I remember thinking it awful what one man can do to another,

and even worse, a group to another group. I would like to think that I wasn’t letting myself see

the differences of appearances between everyone out of fear that I was just like the horrible men

that I had read about in our book. Now I know that I was seeing them as everyone else does.

From that point on, it became a lot harder to dismiss the fact that I was seeing these differences

more and more. It seemed harmless enough, that every time someone walked into a room, my

mind would categorize them based on how they looked. It was just seeing our physical

differences, and it seemed that was all it was. However, as a grew older and more able to

understand politics and culture, I began to feel certain ways towards people that I had never even

met before.

I come from a deeply republican family, and that quite obviously influenced what I

watched and how I understood what I was being fed intellectually. I was fed a healthy serving of

Fox News and conservative banter, and in turn learned ideals that fell in line with those factors.

It wasn’t until I arrived in college that I found I was waging a war on culture and race in my

mind. While I thought that whatever I had in my head never hurt anybody and all of those

thoughts weren’t racist, I began to understand that just because someone looked a certain way

does not mean they are the person I imagine. That is not to say that I thought anyone was less

capable than me, or less sophisticated, or that their parents loved them any more or less that mine

loved me. I simply expected certain actions and ideas from a person based on what group I saw

them as and tried to mentally prepare for any response I needed to give. That however, is already

bad enough. I held others accountable for what I expected them to be, rather than what a good

human should be.

 My racial awareness has been influenced primarily by my education. The more I learned

about the past experiences of races in America, the more I realized that some of the stigmas that

existed in the past three centuries have carried into our time. There have been many times that I

wanted to ignore the obvious, but the signs are right in front of my face. Hearing others every

day, saying racially charged jokes and making false judgements on how something thinks and

acts from the color of their skin. Even the way that we interpret each other’s actions is influenced

by how our eyes see each other. Hearing someone’s ethical and political opinion sounds different

based on what classification they fall under. It may not be a conscious decision to feel this way,

but the institution of racism has been prolonged in our country by how everyone treats each

other, not to mention what we expect of our fellow human beings.

If it were not for an examination of not only American history, but of world history as

well, I may have thought that all of this was normal, and that nothing was wrong with the way I

inherently saw the world. I was raised in a white household, around a white family, with many

white friends. I lived in a bubble that provided shelter from the sad truth that racism still exists. It

may not be the same as it was in the past, but let’s not forget that it was only a little over fifty

years ago that everyone was completely separate, and the status quo of that time still moves

forward with great momentum today. Some are far better off than others, no matter how

unnatural that is. It is tangible in the air and in our sight, if we only see what is right in front of

us. Knowing the problem is only one percent of the battle and being a better people should be

easier than we are making it.