Bobadilla 1

Gissell Bobadilla
Jennifer Rodrick
English 115
16 October 2016
First Draft: Racism In Our Space
As long as human beings have been around, the dispute goes, and individuals of a
different nation or skin color have always been feared. In a diverse nation, such as the
United States, one may think it is a progressive country, but in reality its not. We are
constantly reminded by the brutality and hateful discrimination that occurs in our lives
today. The space around us has shaped the aspect of our identities by making us conform
to a title of someone were not, being influenced by our surroundings and having to
conform how people in public view us.
Each race is discriminated in their own ways. For instance, ever since the horrible
incident on 9/11, Muslims are constantly known as the terrorist. That everyone should
be afraid of them because you never know what they are capable of doing. While
Mexicans are the illegal immigrants who come into America stealing peoples jobs and
causing chaos. They bring violence, drugs and are rapists. According to a video by CNN,
Donald Trump had many allegations to make of people outside of America.

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He believes the best option there is to stop these people from coming into our country, is
by building a wall where no one will be able to sneak through. He also claims the United
States is run by unwise people and is a dumping ground for the worlds problem. From
what I can recall, Native Americans were here first, making us the immigrants of this
country, including Trump himself. Not only is racism getting out of hand but also no one
feels safe and protected. Additionally, African Americans absolutely cannot be seen doing
anything because it is automatically a suspicious act. Not much different from Muslims
and Mexicans, they are considered dangerous. Early this year there was an incident of a
cop shooting an African American for selling cds outside of a liquor store. Alton Sterling,
father of five children fatality dies in the hands of a cop. In the article, The Daily Beast
Goldie Taylor comments, Sterling was standing alone, his arms outstretched at his sides,
when a Baton Rouge police officer rushed and tackled him to the ground. A second
quickly joined and, moments later, Sterling lay bleeding to death from multiple gunshot
wounds to the chest and back. (Taylor Alton Sterling, Father of FiveOne More Black
Man Shot Down by American Police) What Taylor is trying to say is that the world is
messed up; how can they leave an innocent man bleed to death for not doing anything?
The policemen who were involved, asserted their body cameras fell from their uniform
during the altercation, they insisted he was armed but it was thanks to a bystander who
captured the occurrence. I myself believe if it were a Caucasian man, none of this would
have happened, not trying to sound racist but these are known facts. We are raised to
believe that certain races are worse than others.
Modern racism is said to have been derived from various spaces, the most common
being upbringing. As a child, you are reliant on your parents to assist you in whom to

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become. Part of that implicates their own judgments, that of which kids dont have the
maturity to form on their own. Upbringing is an appropriate strong aspect of what
influences people to become racist, or to have even the slightest racial views. In the book
Puddnhead Wilson, the author Mark Twain, explains to us the readers that as a baby we
are born with no sense of education or judgment. Switched at birth, Twain creates a
situation in which a white child (Tom) gets a "black" upbringing and a black child but
white of skin (Chambers) a "white" upbringing. At the end of the story, Tom is revealed
as being black and Chambers as being white:
The real heir (Chambers) could not endure the terrors of the
white mans parlor. The family pew was a misery to him,
yet he could nevermore enter the solacing refuge of the
nigger gallery, that was closed to him for good and all.
The false heir (Tom) a valuable slave, was sold down the
river by the creditors. (Twain 122)
Toms genes or his spoiled upbringing as a wealthy white master caused his cruelty as a
person. While Chambers ancestry or his less protected childhood made him a calm,
decent person. This book mainly speaks about the way our surroundings shape us. The
way one thinks and perceives the world is the way one was raised. If one grows up in a
racist family, most likely that person will grow up to be a racist himself or herself. But if
one comes from a more accepting family, most likely that person will see everyone
equally the same. Upbringing is the largest cause of racism. As we grow up, media
becomes a factor of our lives whether or not we want it to be, and is also a major source
of how racism keeps itself active. Since the 70s the media has been giving us racial

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labels. Take advertisements as an example. We as people grow up watching T.V. and
spend most of our time in the Internet. When we see advertisements we do not pay much
attention to it but if you examine it closely, you can see clearly the message that is being
sent out. The computer company Intel released a racist ad on 2007 about a white-collar
executive man proudly at the center of a team of all-black athletes.

This ad has openly clear similarities to plantations and slavery. It announces as if the
African-Americans are still the slaves and that the white man is still the boss. It appears
to be an assertion of the leading white ideology that recognizes African-Americans as
inferior to whites. We see things like this and think is fine but really it is not. That is why
when our friends make racist comments we laugh and accept it but that should never be
the case. When were in public we immediately categorize a person by how they look.
Do you ever get weird looks from others because you look different? Do you often
feel like you do not belong in a certain place? If you have not yet took that into
consideration you should open your eyes a little more and see how others react when you
are around them. Taking into thought Brent Staples story of Black Men and Public

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Space, he talks about his personal experience. He was seen as an attacker to women just
because of his skin color. He proceeds in his story by saying:
Over the years, I learned to smother the rage I felt at so often
being taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led
to madness. I now take precautions to make myself less
threating. I move about with care, particularly late in the
evening. I give a wide berth to nervous people on subway
platforms during the wee hours, particularly when I have
exchanged business clothes for jeans And on late-evening
constitutionals I employ what has proved to be an excellent
tension-reducing measure. (Staples 143)
Brent Staples made sure to act normal when around people late at night because he did
not want them to be afraid of him. He tried to be this way so people would not look at
him as the enemy. It should never be the case where you have to act differently because
people feel threaten of your presence. It must not be great to seem as a target by the
police because of the way you look. Everyone should be treated equal and be respected as
one.
The spaces that surround us shape each individual differently. Many are categorize
in different groups but we are all humans, we share the same emotions and feelings. No
matter the skin color, no one should be considered more superior than the other. At the
end of our journey, we all end up in the same place, in a casket underground.

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Work Cited
- CNN. Donald Trump doubles down on calling Mexicans rapists. Online video clip.
YouTube. YouTube, 25 June 2015. Web. 16 October 2016.

- Taylor, Goldie. Alton Sterling, Father of FiveOne More Black Man Shot Down by
American Police. The Daily Beast. 6 July 2016. Web. 16 October 2016.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/06/alton-sterling-father-of-five-one-moreblack-man-shot-down-by-american-police.html

- Twain, Mark. Puddnhead Wilson. New York: New American Library, 1964. Print.

- Ferret, Wily. Intel under Fire for racist Ad. The Inquirer. 01 Aug. 2007. Web. 18
October 2016.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1004060/intel-racist

- Staples, Brent. Black Men and Public Space. 1986. The Norton Reader: An Anthology
of Nonfiction. Ed. Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al. 14th ed. New York: Norton, 2016. 141-43.
Print.