Assignment 22- Clifton Grady

My life experience has been one that I feel not many experience. If any of you haven’t caught on by now, yes, I am a minority. Not only am I a minority, but I also have a life threatening disability. Despite this though, I prosper on as anyone else would. Being a minority, a lot of stereotypes come to my mind as I try to realize how people may perceive me. Personally, I have never (to my knowledge) experienced racism directly. I have always been a gifted and talented student, and when I lived in Maryland that meant going to a special school altogether beginning in first grade. In this school, I was surrounded by other kids who just didn’t look like me. But I really didn’t let this affect me very much at all. I made friends and grew up as normal, I was just in an environment where my peers were racially different from me. This has been the case for essentially my entire growing up. There are very few nonwhite people who I consider good friends simply due to the environments I have been in. I have been told I am a “white” black person, and sometimes this frustrates me. I feel as though race and personality should be mutually exclusive things. Just because I come from a background of financial wellbeing, a good education, strong family values, and I speak properly (admittedly, my knowledge of slang language is so lacking that sometimes I find difficulty in communicating with peers via text messages), that shouldn’t indicate that I am white, as I am clearly not (at least not wholly. Yes, my mother is white, but no one looks and me and tries to figure out exactly what I am. Society takes a quick glance and categorizes me—black.). This has made my life a bit of a confusing one. I know exactly who I am, but society does not, and convincing people of who I am has always been a challenge. People either see me and pinpoint me as black, or talk to me and determine that I’m so-called “white.” All I want to be is me, and I feel like my background provides a sense of uniqueness to any societal niche I find myself in. I understand both black and white culture, and I feel like someone like me could serve as a much needed bridge between two races seemingly at war in times like these where racial tension is more quarrelsome than ever.