“Look, She throws like a girl!”
Riley Hill,
West Chester, PA
For me, growing up I was just a little tom boy girl that loved to play sports and be outside. I realized at a young age that I was not a girly-girl and I cared a lot about sporty stuff. I started playing soccer when I was younger and then continued on to play Division 1 for college. Looking back on my childhood, the gender stereotypes have not gone away, they simply have changed. Back then, I was never thought to be great at a sport because I was a girl. In gym classes, the boys were always picked first. However, when I was a D1 athlete, I realized the gender discrimination was even worse. Men’s soccer created a much larger crowd and then earned much more money for funding compared to the women’s soccer team.
Blacks beat me, I forgave them
Bob D,
West Chester, PA
It happened in the summer of ’68. I was alone at a concert at the city stadium in Glen Cove, NY. There was chanting, black kids -some of them friends from school- surrounded me and I was beaten unconscious. It wasn’t personal. Dr. King had been murdered, it was summertime, the nation was in flames. I forgave them.
I’m the mother of these children!
Carolyn L. Mazloomi,
West Chester, OH
I am African American woman married 45 years to an Iranian man. We have two sons. When they were young, many thought I was the babysitter when I took them out.
Born a crime ; Black and alive.
Bankole,
West Chester, PA.
Why?
Why do you hate me?
Why is my existence considered a pestilence in your eyes?
Why do you kill me?
Why do you murder my sons and tarnish my reputation?
Why do you rape my wives and daughters?
Why do you take from me and call it emancipation?
“You hate me don’t you?
You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture.”
You love to see me down,
you pick me up only to toss me to the ground.
Why you over-work my mommy?
Why you take my daddy from me?
Too white for my own good.
Lauren Qualters,
West Chester, PA.
For my race card project I chose the phrase “Too white for my own good” which is most certainly a true statement, in both humerous and negative ways. I am certainly very sterotypically “white” but not in an intentional or discriminatory way. My traits are my own and they embody who I am. To take the prase another way, specifically the “for my own good” portion, recognizes that though I am aware of the many racial injustices that are a part of the world today, I often find myself blind to it because I am not the victim. Though I recognize this as a problem, it is still something that I struggle with in terms of omission and ignorance.
If there is someone I can pinpoint as being as “white” as me, it is my mother. We both grew up in (generally) the same white Philadelphia neighborhood, and have both (generally) been upper-middle class our whole lives. We atended the same all girls catholic high school that was very very white (in a graduating class of 213 we had maybe 10-15 non white students) and we enjoy a lot of the same activities. Not a week goes by that we do not text each other about our most recent “#whitepeopleproblems” or musings. If you go to the website ” Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com ” there is a 4/5 chance that my mom, myself, or both of us will absolutely love any entry that is picked at random. Entires include “Where the Wild Things Are”, “Picking your own Fruit” and “Hating People Who Wear Ed Hardy”. Check, check and check, and thats just on the first page. It is certainly easy to make fun of myself for being “too white” so that is one reasoning for choosing the phrase that I did.
Another aspect of my phrase is that I often find myself blind to the social injustices going on around me because it sometimes feels that “I’m not a part of it” or “It doesn’t effect me” – both of which are positively dripping with ignorance to the world around me. I admit that I live in a bubble and that it can very often be a safe and comfortable place to be, but “safe and comfortable” never changed the world. I am certainly interested in a variety of cultures and their practices, but I also recognize that I have a habit of ignoring the bad things that go on in the world right around me. I like to think that I am open minded and non discriminitory, but I doubt that I’m going to be the next big social activist.
Though I might be “too white for my own good” I like to think I do my part at work where I teach preschoolers. We do a lot of multicultural leanring, and talk a lot about accepting others. Bullying and discrimination are certainly not tolorated and I like to think that I am giving them the best advice that I can. I know I still have a ways to go in my own life, but hopefully by helping them out I can help the next generation to be a little bit more aware of the world around them.
Not just a little white girl
Nicolette Vogelman,
West Chester, PA
Most people see me as a quiet, little blonde girl. Honestly, I’ve heard people refer to me as a little white girl. In large crowds, I have heard people say “there she is, the little white girl.” I hate being referred to that. Yes I am small and your typical little white girl but I have way much more going for me than to be called a little white girl. Being called that, is embarrassing. I feel helpless. From the outside, I may just be a little ole white girl but the inside is much much more.
Don’t we breathe the same air?
Melanie Brown,
West Chester, PA.
Whether you are of African decent, European, Asian, Caribbean, Latino, etc… We breathe the same air.
