My Community And Race

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Abstract

Racism in my community is as I though it was from the start, not as apparent as it is in other places in the country. Being someone that does not take skin color, religion or any other part of a person as a deciding factor of how that person is cultural diversity is not as apparent to me. Taking another look at my community I noticed differences between me and other members, as well as noticing things about the leaders and the way they tread individuals in my community. Over all I have to say I am happy where I am and am going to continue living my life regardless of what my neighbors look like.

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Race influences the world we know today greatly. So race in my community also plays and important roll.

While I was growing up I never paid any attention to cultural diversity. My community was not just a white community either, but I suppose at a young age you don't look at those differences. These differences were not apparent to me, until I made a major school change. At the age of 11 I moved from a private Lutheran school to a public school. In this transition many differences in culture that I did not see were shown to me by other students. I found that there are many different opinions on things I original did not notice where there. Yet not until I started high school social studies did I realized that there are an abundance of different race, skin color, culture, religion, language, and ethnicity. Everything I did not see as different is different in many other people's eyes. I learned and became interested in the trials and tribulations of these cultures and have come to more greatly appreciate there differences. Discovering the types of differences I had found really opened my eyes to the people around me and why some of them do the things that they do in their cultures. The whole experience was like a culture shock. Don't get me wrong I knew that not everyone was the same but I had never really known why and how they practiced their beliefs.

In the United States the majority seems to be White Americans. This statement also holds true for the percentages concerning my community as well. White Americans consume approximately 87.4% of my community's population (ESRI, ND). Being as I am a White Female American the majority of the members in my community resembled

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me. I find this percentage hard to believe being a member in the community. Though the number of White Americans seems high when, I walk out my front door there does not seem to be that many White Americans, I see a more diverse group of Americans. According to the ESRI population poll the Asian or Pacific Americans are second in line for their population percentage coming in at about 5.9% in my community (ESRI, ND). I do not visual agree with these numbers either, the group that I would have though would be in close running to the White American population in my community was the Black Americans, and they only came in at 4.7% (ESRI, ND). If you were to stand on my front porch I think you would change the percentages of the Black Americans. These days though it to me is hard to have accurate percentages as we continue to obtain illegal immigrants that I am sure are not registered in this system. Not to make myself sound racist but according to ESRI population poll only 1.5% of my community members are of Hispanic origin, I also do not feel that this is an accurate count (ESRI, ND).

Being that I see my culture as neither a majority nor minority in my neighborhood, I do still feel that the people in my community treat me with the same respect that they treat anyone else. Most people in my community are here to do one thing that is to live their lives. I am doing the same thing living my life. We all see each other in passing and say hello or sometimes chat for a moment or two. I do not see any culture in my community treating another with disrespect. Most of the members here are peaceful individuals and people that I trust. Being from a smaller town in Indian when I moved to the location that I am at now I looked in my neighbor hood for friends, I found many of them here. Many of my friends are of different cultures, skin color, sex and age than myself, but I know they do not treat me any differently that they would anyone else.

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I believe that treating people with respect is taught at a young age and carried on through the years. Evidence that supports my belief in this is stated in the handbook given to elementary students that attend Kinder Elementary Schools. This school is located in my community and the handbook states "Treat others with dignity and respect (avoid putdowns)" (Kinder Elementary, 2006). The views that adults have are reflections of what they were taught as children, so instilling respect into them at early ages will reflect respect onto them as adults.

Not being a person that follows politics or any type of leadership positions I did not know who in my community was Mayor or worked as any elected official in my community. Prior to exploring these facts I believed we would have more that one race represented with the leaders, I discovered differently. When visiting my community web site I found that the only race represented in our leaders is the White American race (City of Centerville, 2006). Yet I also found that though the different races are not represented in the leaders, they are shown in the council members. According to my community's web site, the city staff that assists the leaders is made up of people from almost 30 different types of locations(City of Centerville, 2006). With staff from so many locations the races will vary in each place. Having different races represented in staff should help represent them in the leader's decision making process. Having all of my community leaders look the same as me, they seem to treat me no differently than they treat each other. Though as I said before I do not pay close attention to these things. So to get another view to the subject I asked my Husband a few questions. These questions included: Being that the only race represented in leadership positions is White Americans do you feel that White Americans are treated differently than any other race in our

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community? Do you feel minority group interests are represented in our community? My

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