Cesar Veras


My very first experience with racism, and being aware of it, started since my childhood days in the Dominican Republic. I remember there always being a sense of racial superiority between Dominicans and Haitians. Everywhere I used to go racist jokes where being made of this group of people and this only made me think as a little by that sometimes people are born superior to other people. Even though my family was always teaching me the right morals. Teaching me how everyone is created equal. The things that I used to see around made think otherwise. They made me think that I was better than this people.
The racial situation in the Dominican Republic is nowhere near what happened to African Americans. There is not any serious violence or segregation involved, but it is not the tangible things that hurt the psychological state of the human beings. It is the intangible ideas that make all the damage. Haitians in the Dominican Republic are growing up with some of the hatred that is expressed from native Dominicans. “Many Haitians were at times insulted just because of where they are from.” This makes the whole entire race being looked as a whole, and not as individuals like they are supposed to.
My personal experience in the Dominican Republic makes me think of the story “Uncle Toms’ Children,” by Richard Wright, when he says; “I was never under any conditions to fight white folks again.” The connection I drew back to my past is that even though it was not prohibited, playing or interacting with Haitian kids was not portrayed as the right thing to do in the society. Many stereotypes were going on, and even now that makes Haitian kids seem like an inferior race.

This i Just part of my essay.....(Race Does Not Determine Your Destination)

Had it ever occur to you that race had to do anything with the way we limit ourselves to certain things in life? Do you think that race has a big impact on your life and what you become? I happened to always think that way but never discouraging myself before I turned sixteen. The summer after I turned sixteen I got admitted to attend Choate Rosemary Hall a very prestigious boarding school in Wallingford CT. Stereotypically enough I thought that only people that belonged to the white race were privileged enough to attend a school like this because the are seen as superiors in America and they are said to be very wealthy. In fact this is what scared me the most to be the one person out of the few to be on scholarship and to be of a middle class income around these people so different from me.
Being at Choate Rosemary Hall This summer really enable me to learn how unimportant race is and that we as minorities of colored race tend to limit ourselves too much because of what we are. I’m not of white descent and my family is not wealthy at all they just happened to have enough income to live a descent life but yet there I was sitting in the same place of someone that from way back in history has been said to be superior to me. This is where I began to realize that your race does not affect where or what you do in life.

my essay

as we grow up we tend to have certain ideas of races. we learn to think lik this through our parents... ( free writing)


intro: discuss how ppl usually think one way about a race.. close minded
intro book "the sky is gray" and story
my idea that ideas are not real
Body 1: ideas of race
book: white people are superior
story: white people are rich
body 2: how it affects us
book: blck ppl had less opportunities and were limited
story: felt inferior and poor
body 3: truth of races
book: truth expressed through young boy
story: rhetoric assistants story
conclusion: not everything u think is true
summary of ponts and ideas


this is like my outline so far

EZ's Essay so far

Race is something that we all have. It gives us our identity in the marathon. As we grow up, we tend to have different thoughts and opinions on these different races. Having these thoughts and ideas affects the way we tend to act toward other races. Experiences like this are revealed through Richard in “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” written by Richard Wright and through my own life experiences.

In “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” a very small and young African American boy named Richard is portrayed throughout the whole story as kind of a student who is taking a class on how to live under Jim Crow laws. Richard makes some mistakes and pays a price when he does. He learns a very painful lesson in the very beginning of the story. He is a young boy who lives in the black part of the town. One day he got into a fight with a group of white boys. Richard was throwing cinders at them. But all of a sudden, they threw a glass bottle at him. Richard was seriously hurt. He fell to the ground and cried for help but his friends ran away from him because of the fear of getting hit by a glass bottle. Luckily someone helped him up and took him to the nearest hospital where he got three stitches. When Richard came home he waited anxiously for his mother to come home to reassure him. To embrace him. When his mom came home he told her all about his experiences earlier in that day. His mom was outraged. “How come yuh didn’t hide?” she asked instead of asking are you okay. She gave him a horrible beating that he would remember for the rest of his life. His mom told hime to not fight anyone let alone white people. He was never to talk back to white people, he was never to disrespect white people, he was always supposed to be inferior to black people. Richard was very shocked about the fact that he was not equal to white people.

Similarly to Richard I had experienced situations that enabled me to learn about race. Up until I was in Bangladesh to the age of 9 I used to think everyone was equal. I never questioned the meaning of race because we all were Bengali. We all were from the same country. I used to believe that we all were equal in every single way possible. But when I came to America I was just amazed to see all of these people from so many different races that had so many different views and perspectives on the world. I would still act the same way I did in Bangladesh. I was race blind. I treated everyone equally. But unlike Richard I did ot learn about race teh hard way. I did not get physical experience to learn about race.

And taht is I think due to teh civil rights movement. It gave me teh ability to live, eat, be next to, stand up with, walk with, look at, share with, talk with everyone. And it gave us a chance to be friends with everyone and anyone despite their race. And i think that is one of the best achievments of mankind in all of history.

draft

Samantha Frazier

In a time where Jim Crow is the law and whites have the power to get away with murder, racism is something that is both taught and experienced first hand by children both black and white. No matter what the race of a child is, in America especially, and in other country, children become aware of their identity and ethnicity to a certain extent. Some feel that racial profiling comes from a nonstop recycling of old customs and practices that live on dormant in the back of the mind. People chose to ignore signs of racism and try to forget the harsdships of past civil rights activits and live on. However children of all colors are able to identify and respond to racism as a young age and even question the experiences thney’ve had.

an experience w/ race...

I haven't really had any personal experience w/ race, but this topic did remind me of a book I read when was younger called Amazing Grace. A young Black girl named Grace desperately wanted the starring role in her class play Peter Pan. However, some other classmates tried to shut her down by telling her she couldnt be Peter because she was a girl and she was Black. She felt so hurt and confused about being rejected due to her race, she had no clue what to do, so she confided in her mother. This story came to mind because like many of the characters we studied in the literature we have read are just like Grace; they don't know how to react to or deal with the issue of racial discrimination.

an experience w/ race...

when i realized i was black

i was only in the 6th grade and there weren't many people who looked and talked like me. i eventually migrated into a group of individuals who i could identify with but was still afraid of accepting differance and maturity. as i went on to high school and learned all about different cultures and people, socializing with all races was much easier to deal with until i was asked a very ignorant question. why don't you talk black? i responded by saying that i do not know much ablout color languages, i speak purple but orange is my native tongue. it bothered me to know that such ignorance still existed in the most intergrated situations and that people still carried with them the mind set and the strong belief in sterotypes of blacks.

first altercation with racism

whn i was evenyears old i experienced my first encounter with racism. I was in a park right next to my apartment building wit hmy best friend Jelori. We were on the only two swings in the entire park just having a good time. We see a white man with his daughter waking towards the park and become excited that maybe a new friend was in the midst. My best friend and i were totally surprised when the white older man walked up to me and planly asked me to move. I was stunned at how blunt and rude his statement was and i said why. He responed by saying because "my daughter wants to swing so move now nigger" . i beacame very angry and said no she can wait in line like i did..he slowly backed away and said that " i knew i shouldnt have come here you people still dont know our place"...and with that comment he left but left me with ashamed, confused, and scared. I think from then on i have had problems with accepting the thoughts that come along with being blak. people always say to me that that's how the world works....but why is that something i should just accept and not fight.

my connection

although in "my topic" i discussed how richard in uncle tom's children saw white people i actually want to discuss the story the sky is gray because in that story it seemed as though only the white people had money and were better off when in reality (my reality) there are white people that are not well off at all

My Story

Growing up in a place where poverty is nothing new, i noticed that almost everyone living there was either on welfare, section 8 or both. although this is not something that i thought of consciencly i assumed that the only people receiving these benefits would be people of color. my perspective changed this summer while at carleton college. when ever i thought of a white person i thought of money and big houses so when i arrived at the program i felt that i would be the poorest person there, compared to them. however, i had a rhetoric assistant who was white that allowed me to see that not all white people had money. he grew up in alabama with a poor family. This didnt surprise me because there are some white people that are poor (not like colored people though). i then learned that he also grew up using food stamps. i was shocked!!!! i never imagined that white people could use food stamps or even wanting to. i realized that white should not be related to wealth.

my topic

i want to discuss the way we learn about the race of white people. In the story "Uncle Tom's Children" richard learns about the laws of jim crow but he also learns about white people. i want to discuss this issue to show that we have this idea that white people are superior when they really are not

Race does not determine your destination(this is my essay topic)

Coming back from a very prestigious boarding school in Wallingford CT called Choate Rosemary Hall this past summer I began to learn how non important race was. I'm not of white descent and my family doesn't have money or are not wealthy at all. I found myself sitting in a classroom with people from all over the world that had a way better economical situation than me, race in this situation didn't play in factor in me being admitted into such school. As long as you have the skills, motivation and qualities of a goes student you will get the same opportunities that these wealthy people are giving. There were black and Hispanic people at the boarding school that I was attending that could clearly afford such tuition. On the other hand there were students who share the same qualities as the others as far as academics but were on scholarships but they were sharing the same environment.
Money and opportunities have nothing to do with race, is all about what you make of your personal life. You set down your boundaries in life. Your culture and life does not determine what you do or what you could do. Race doesn't predict where you're heading is your actions that do. People are always confused and mistaken when they say that you can't go a certain way or be at a certain level because of your race or skin color.

This is just what I have so far.........

this is my story:
When i was living in the Dominican Republic i noticed how hatians that migrated there were treated as inferior. Everywhere i used to go people would make descriminating jokes about hatians. Many hatians were insulted because of where they were fromand what their background is. me as a little boy did not understand why these people were treates this way. There was stereotyping everywhere and everytime i hear about sturories of african americans i emember my experience in the dominican republic. I grew up in the aggressor side instead of he victims side. I witnessed how people were born with a mentality of superiority and ego. Eventhough the situation wasn't nowhere near as severe as the african ameriacan situation, it still brought an impact in my life of how a society can shape a persons life.
The topic of my essay is going to be about how people are raised with an idea of superiority, and how eventhough there weren't violence nor segregation invoved between Dominicans and Hatians. The mind set of a person could atill think that they are superior to others lik in the stories.

for my essay I will write relate a time of my life to "the sky is gray". The scene was went the boy was hungry but his mother had no money to give because the money she had was to leave town and pay the dentist.

Changes to Schedule

There have been a few changes to our printed schedule:
1.Danielle's and Kiese's conversation about Katrina will be at 6:30 PM tonight (instead of 7), in the Villard Room, Main 2nd floor.
3.Today (Wednesday) the afternoon study period (3:30-5) will be held in the Library Seminar Room, room 30, which is just to the left after you come up the stairs into the front hall.
2. Instead of the Friday study period from 4-5, Luis will meet you at the entrance of Main and take you on a tour of the Vassar residence houses.