Ryan Fleming Post #1

My heritage is Spanish, English, Irish and Scottish. I predominantly identify myself as being Spanish and English due to the strong influence from both cultures in my family. My mothers family is from Spain and I grew up having my cousins from Spain spend their summers in the U.S with us. This greatly influenced my connection to Spanish culture. On my dads side of the family, my grandmother moved here from London when she was twenty-one and still strongly identifies herself as an English woman. This strong identification led my fathers family to be raised with complete English culture influence, which has in turn affected the way I was raised.

I first became aware of issues of ethnicity and race when I was very young, probably around the age of five or six. I am from Niagara Falls, which is a very racially diverse community and from a very young age the schools started to teach about the issues of ethnicity and race. At times I almost felt that the strong push of teaching racial issues at such a young, impressionable age, caused more harm than good. At such a young age my peers and I did not see racial differences. I don't want to seem naive in saying this because of course we all knew we were different from each other but it did not affect the way we interacted with one another because we did not know that it could, or had in the past. When the school started really pushing the ideas of racial differences, it almost forced us to see differences in each other that we hadn't before and put a divide between everyone. Of course the schools intention was not to create a divide, but somehow the constant stress of the issues put ideas and stereotypes into our heads. Learning about these issues definitely had their positive affects as well and taught us to not have racial prejudices against one another, but at such an impressionable age it more so turned our focus to see the differences we hadn't before causing a racial divide that was nonexistent before.

At home, my parents always placed a strong focus on treating everyone like equals. The differences of race were not stressed upon so that I would never judge a person based on their race, everyone was equal. My entire family is very open to ethnic differences and always accepted everyone as equals. I have always agreed with this idea and have tried my best in life to not accept ethnic and racial stereotypes.

Over time my views on race and ethnicity have changed a great deal. When I was younger I did not want to accept the fact that there were still ethnic and racial issues in the world and in someways did not think they truly existed anymore. I also thought racial and ethnic issues only occurred between blacks and whites, the fact that all ethnic groups were affected by these issues was not a focus being taught in the schools until I got older. As I got older I started to see ethnic and racial issues more and noticed how predominant they still are today. I distinctly remember a time when I was in fourth grade that myself and two other girls were playing in our neighborhood. One of the girls was African American and the other girl and myself were white. The three of us walked to meet a friend at her grandmothers house and when we got there, our friends grandmother told our African American friend that she was not allowed into her house because she was black. The grandmother was a white woman that had grown up in the south and was set in her ways. At first we didn't know what to do, but soon quickly left her house and ran back to my house. None of us had ever experienced or witnessed anything like that before and were in complete shock. That point in my life was a defining moment when I realized that racial prejudices still existed and I was devastated to find out that they were existing in my own community. Coming to college was another huge eye opener for me. The friends that I made were all mostly from predominantly small white suburban areas where they had been sheltered from any ethnic diversity most of their lives. It was amazing to see how unaware of other racial groups they were. It was also amazing to hear all the stereotypes that my high school had because of the diverse lower income community it was in. It was news to me but apparently because of the high school I went to, I was " in a gang, was a criminal, brought weapons to school everyday and it was amazing I made it to college." It was actually very humorous yet frustrating to hear all of the stereotypes I held just because of where I was from. Coming to college made me appreciate where I came from so much more than I ever had. I know that growing up in a racially diverse community has not only allowed me to be aware of different ethnic cultures but has also allowed me to look past racial differences and to see a person for who they are and not their race.