After reading this, maybe you'll think I'm a complete asshole. You wouldn't be the first to feel that way. Regardless of what you think, know that I wrote this as truthfully as possible with little regard for sounding ?PC?. This is really what I've seen and how I've felt. Anyway, on to my story...
Note: It's also rather long. No cliffs notes will be provided.
When I was a kid I lived in a neighborhood that really had only two racial groups: white people, and Mexicans. I lived in Santa Cruz County, California. When people think of Santa Cruz, they usually associate it with beaches and redwood trees, but the southern part of the county is mostly agricultural and has a lot of Hispanic people. As a kid, I didn't really have all that favorable a view towards Mexicans. For some reason, Mexican kids had a propensity for joining gangs and trying to assert their dominance over rival gangs and/or random non-gang-members. This happened plenty often on and around elementary schools through high schools. I was not the only kid who had a bad image of Mexicans due to the gang affiliations of their kids. As I got older, I had more experiences with Mexican adults, and for the most part found them to be soft spoken, honest, hardworking people. It also became obvious that many of their kids had similar values (and they had plenty of kids, which I guess is probably caused by the fact that most of them are catholic), however there was definitely a problem with Mexican kids and gangs. There were no white gangs where I came from, and even if you had wanted to join a gang as a white kid, you wouldn't have been able to.
The thing about these gang members was that they were pretty easy to identify. Once I was old enough to start noticing the difference between Hispanic adults and their children, it also became pretty obvious which of their kids were in gangs. They wore red or blue, had pants that were falling off, tattoos with ?XIII? or ?XIV? on their shoulders. They pretty much looked like what you'd picture when you think of a gang member from the ghetto. Why were there only Hispanic gangs and not white gangs? I don't know. In fact, it didn't really matter all that much to me. Once you get to be 12 or 14 years old, the youngest gang members stop being bullies around the playground. They don't care about white people, or anyone who's not in a gang. The focus of gang members by the time they reach high school is to fight between themselves. I wasn't in a gang, and therefore was never really bothered by gang members except for some bullying as a kid. My opinion now, as it has been since then, is that most Mexican people are soft spoken, honest, hardworking people.
After I graduated from high school, I moved. I came to Sacramento. Sacramento has black people, and Asian people. People that I hadn't really spent any time around before, and had no real opinion about. I quickly made friends with several Asian guys. I've never had a problem with Asian people (except when they whine about their overprotective parents on internet forums), and most Asian cultures seem to be similar enough to white American culture that it's easy to get along with these people. Even though I had a favorable opinion of Mexicans in general, I didn't really have many Mexican friends. There was often a language barrier, and often Hispanic kids would tend to keep to themselves rather than interacting with white kids. This hasn't been the case with me and Asian people ? we generally get along fine.
The same wasn't so true with black people. When I started seeing black people around, they were doing a pretty good job of fitting into stereotypes I'd seen on TV. A lot of them dressed similarly to those Mexican gangsters I remembered, except in $150 basketball shoes. I actually understood what people meant when they had been talking about ?ebonics?. The majority of black youth couldn't speak halfway proper English, even in classrooms. The majority of the black people I was seeing were really making me think that the ?uneducated? and ?ghetto? stereotypes were true.
Then one evening, I was outside my apartment, working on my car. It was late - after midnight, and I was trying to fix something so I could drive the car in the morning. Four young black men approached me by my car. Three of them stood by the back of my car. One of them walked up to me and asked me a question. Then, without warning, he punched me in the mouth. All four of them began to run after me. I ran away screaming, and I was chased until my attackers ran off when I started waking up the neighbors. I went to the hospital and got four stitches in my lip. This REALLY didn't help my perception of blacks. They were already not looking all that great to me, and then I get assaulted by a group of them. I was scared to go outside at night for a long time after that. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, and yes, if I saw a black man walking towards me I would be more concerned than if a white guy were to do the same thing.
About a year after the assault incident, my car turned up missing one morning. To make a long story short, the police were able to identify the guy that stole it (although they never caught him). Hew was a black guy. This wasn't helping my perception. Every interaction I was having with black people was negative. For a while I really didn't want to have anything to do with black people. Honestly, they scared me. I don't want to worry about my life or my property every night, and all these things that were happening to me were perpetrated by black men.
But then something happened, my fiancée took an art class from a black professor. She loved the class, and would often stay late to work in the lab until I came to get her. Through her, I was able to interact with her teacher, who I've come to know as one of the best teachers, and most interesting people I've ever met. He started to change my perceptions. Then I met another guy ? a friend of a friend. A black guy who coached a debate team and could talk about philosophy for hours. These two men made me realize it's not the race that's bad, but something else.
In all these negative dealings I'd had with people, whether they were minor, like people yelling at their spouses outside my window at 3:00AM, or serious, like when I was assaulted, there was one constant: these people, sounded, looked, and acted uneducated, and generally fit the description of ?ghetto?. I'm not going to start to get into what causes people to speak in broken English, even though it's their native language, or what causes them to blast music from their cars at all hours of the night with lyrics about ?killing cops and fvcking hos?, or why they'll walk around with their pants hanging around their ankles, but these are the people I'd been having problems with. Not just black people, but back with the Mexican gang members ? they acted similarly.
I'm still wary walking outside at night and seeing a group of these trashy looking people approaching me, but not because they're Mexican or black, but because they're dressed like thugs, and they talk like thugs, and they probably are thugs. A professional-looking guy in a business suit wouldn't bother me in the least, regardless of whether he was black, white, or any other race.
I'm not the best writer in the world, I don't know if I made any real concrete point there at the end, but maybe people can see where I'm coming from at least. Thanks for reading the whole thing.
Note: It's also rather long. No cliffs notes will be provided.
When I was a kid I lived in a neighborhood that really had only two racial groups: white people, and Mexicans. I lived in Santa Cruz County, California. When people think of Santa Cruz, they usually associate it with beaches and redwood trees, but the southern part of the county is mostly agricultural and has a lot of Hispanic people. As a kid, I didn't really have all that favorable a view towards Mexicans. For some reason, Mexican kids had a propensity for joining gangs and trying to assert their dominance over rival gangs and/or random non-gang-members. This happened plenty often on and around elementary schools through high schools. I was not the only kid who had a bad image of Mexicans due to the gang affiliations of their kids. As I got older, I had more experiences with Mexican adults, and for the most part found them to be soft spoken, honest, hardworking people. It also became obvious that many of their kids had similar values (and they had plenty of kids, which I guess is probably caused by the fact that most of them are catholic), however there was definitely a problem with Mexican kids and gangs. There were no white gangs where I came from, and even if you had wanted to join a gang as a white kid, you wouldn't have been able to.
The thing about these gang members was that they were pretty easy to identify. Once I was old enough to start noticing the difference between Hispanic adults and their children, it also became pretty obvious which of their kids were in gangs. They wore red or blue, had pants that were falling off, tattoos with ?XIII? or ?XIV? on their shoulders. They pretty much looked like what you'd picture when you think of a gang member from the ghetto. Why were there only Hispanic gangs and not white gangs? I don't know. In fact, it didn't really matter all that much to me. Once you get to be 12 or 14 years old, the youngest gang members stop being bullies around the playground. They don't care about white people, or anyone who's not in a gang. The focus of gang members by the time they reach high school is to fight between themselves. I wasn't in a gang, and therefore was never really bothered by gang members except for some bullying as a kid. My opinion now, as it has been since then, is that most Mexican people are soft spoken, honest, hardworking people.
After I graduated from high school, I moved. I came to Sacramento. Sacramento has black people, and Asian people. People that I hadn't really spent any time around before, and had no real opinion about. I quickly made friends with several Asian guys. I've never had a problem with Asian people (except when they whine about their overprotective parents on internet forums), and most Asian cultures seem to be similar enough to white American culture that it's easy to get along with these people. Even though I had a favorable opinion of Mexicans in general, I didn't really have many Mexican friends. There was often a language barrier, and often Hispanic kids would tend to keep to themselves rather than interacting with white kids. This hasn't been the case with me and Asian people ? we generally get along fine.
The same wasn't so true with black people. When I started seeing black people around, they were doing a pretty good job of fitting into stereotypes I'd seen on TV. A lot of them dressed similarly to those Mexican gangsters I remembered, except in $150 basketball shoes. I actually understood what people meant when they had been talking about ?ebonics?. The majority of black youth couldn't speak halfway proper English, even in classrooms. The majority of the black people I was seeing were really making me think that the ?uneducated? and ?ghetto? stereotypes were true.
Then one evening, I was outside my apartment, working on my car. It was late - after midnight, and I was trying to fix something so I could drive the car in the morning. Four young black men approached me by my car. Three of them stood by the back of my car. One of them walked up to me and asked me a question. Then, without warning, he punched me in the mouth. All four of them began to run after me. I ran away screaming, and I was chased until my attackers ran off when I started waking up the neighbors. I went to the hospital and got four stitches in my lip. This REALLY didn't help my perception of blacks. They were already not looking all that great to me, and then I get assaulted by a group of them. I was scared to go outside at night for a long time after that. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, and yes, if I saw a black man walking towards me I would be more concerned than if a white guy were to do the same thing.
About a year after the assault incident, my car turned up missing one morning. To make a long story short, the police were able to identify the guy that stole it (although they never caught him). Hew was a black guy. This wasn't helping my perception. Every interaction I was having with black people was negative. For a while I really didn't want to have anything to do with black people. Honestly, they scared me. I don't want to worry about my life or my property every night, and all these things that were happening to me were perpetrated by black men.
But then something happened, my fiancée took an art class from a black professor. She loved the class, and would often stay late to work in the lab until I came to get her. Through her, I was able to interact with her teacher, who I've come to know as one of the best teachers, and most interesting people I've ever met. He started to change my perceptions. Then I met another guy ? a friend of a friend. A black guy who coached a debate team and could talk about philosophy for hours. These two men made me realize it's not the race that's bad, but something else.
In all these negative dealings I'd had with people, whether they were minor, like people yelling at their spouses outside my window at 3:00AM, or serious, like when I was assaulted, there was one constant: these people, sounded, looked, and acted uneducated, and generally fit the description of ?ghetto?. I'm not going to start to get into what causes people to speak in broken English, even though it's their native language, or what causes them to blast music from their cars at all hours of the night with lyrics about ?killing cops and fvcking hos?, or why they'll walk around with their pants hanging around their ankles, but these are the people I'd been having problems with. Not just black people, but back with the Mexican gang members ? they acted similarly.
I'm still wary walking outside at night and seeing a group of these trashy looking people approaching me, but not because they're Mexican or black, but because they're dressed like thugs, and they talk like thugs, and they probably are thugs. A professional-looking guy in a business suit wouldn't bother me in the least, regardless of whether he was black, white, or any other race.
I'm not the best writer in the world, I don't know if I made any real concrete point there at the end, but maybe people can see where I'm coming from at least. Thanks for reading the whole thing.
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