Shagun Doshi,
Naperville, IL.

Coming from a predominately rich, white suburb, and not being rich and white has been an interesting experience. While there is a lot more diversity within my community compared to many others, there is still a lot of hostility. The divide between white and every other race is very prevalent; as it is in many places throughout America. I never really got to know the people that surrounded me until I started working at the local Jewel-Osco. This job not only consisted of cleaning dirty bathrooms and pushing carts that were ten times my size, but I also encountered some of the most ignorant people that I lived amongst. I eventually lost count of the amount of times that people asked where I was from or started the conversation with some Hindi word that I didn’t know. The surprising part was that it wasn’t only old, white people that made such assumptions, it was also many Indian people. I was offended that even though I was born in America, had lived in Naperville most of my life, went to school in America, and saw myself as an American, people were still only looking at what I represented on the outside. While my Indian culture influences a lot of my values and beliefs, the American culture that I have been brought up into also attributes for my personality and views. So yes, even though my skin color and my ethnicity is 100% brown, I am actually from America.