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Cultural Diversity and Global Awareness Assignment

Rob Ellis

21.FA.PSY.1100.2V1 General Psychology

November 14, 2021

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For my paper on Cultural Diversity and Global Awareness, I interviewed a close friend of

mine that I have known for a long time. His name is Corywn Hurt and he is a senior at

Miamisburg High School in Miamisburg, Ohio. Corwyn differs from me in many ways as he

shares a different race, religious belief, and political belief. We share very similar economic

status and we both live in middle class homes and come from similar backgrounds and

upbringings. Corwyn is african-american, identifies as male and is a democrat. He also plays

football and basketball. I identify as male but I am white, I don’t really have any political beliefs

and I just play baseball. Although those differences seem small, they are very impactful and

make a big difference in our lives.

The first text that I wrote talked about the difficulties that African-Americans face in

America today. The social and racial injustices that they face are generations old and are trying

to be ended today. I also saw that these beliefs stem from years of mistreatment.

Corwyn says that he, “is treated differently” because he plays football. He feels he gets a

special type of treatment from his teachers at his high school because of his athletic background

and that is something I have never seen. Being a star football player he feels he gets it easier in

the classroom and some of his teachers give him less work on the weekends.

Corwyn also talked about how he feels he is targeted unfairly by police officers because

of his skin color. This is something that I found very interesting. I obviously hear stories on the

news about this all the time but I’ve never really sat down and asked my close friends about

topics like this. We compared and contrasted examples of us being stopped by police officers. I

was stopped just last week by a highway patrol officer for speeding and was not given a warning

or ticket. But Corwyn was pulled over for having a tail light out and because it was his second

time receiving a warning he got a ticket for it.

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My empathy has definitely changed since my discussion with my friend.

Although this was just a school assignment, I felt it brought good conversations that I normally

would not have had and brought up some tough but necessary questions. These questions seem

tough but as you ask them and dive deeper into the topics they become as normal as any other

conversation.

I feel like the ability that athletes have in schools is very interesting. They are given

priority and even the pass to do a lot of things that regular students can not do. I also take a

sports management class at Sinclair and we talk about this very often. The topic of athletes being

able to do whatever they want at some schools is very interesting and something to look deeper

into.

The fact about police being more aggressive towards him and ticketing him but not

ticketing me is a perfect example of the countless stories you hear on the news all the time. I

never really though things like that happened to kids that I was close with but when you begin to

ask questions like that you find out topics that you never knew before.

Our political beliefs are different but I didn’t find much change in anything else that was

correlated to that. I am not a far-right or left wing person myself so being very in-between those

two spectrums is probably the cause for there not being much change there.

Overall I felt the conversations I had this weekend were very insightful and I am looking

forward to talking about these kinds of things in the future as just regular conversations with my

close friends.
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Anderson , Lajmar. “Libguides: Equity & Diversity Resources: Intersectionality.”

Intersectionality - Equity & Diversity Resources - LibGuides at Sinclair Community College,

https://libguides.sinclair.edu/equityanddiversity/intersectionality.

“Libguides: Antiracism: Home.” Home - Antiracism - LibGuides at Sinclair Community

College, https://libguides.sinclair.edu/antiracism.