I've never fully understood the concept of racism. Do people really hate one another because of their skin color or is there a deeper underlying cause for all of the animosity? If you ask most people in the US (and I would suspect this goes across the world), If you're white in America, you're already ahead of the curve. I never felt a head of any curve from my perspective particularly due to being white and living in predominately low income, black neighborhoods, Hotels & Motels or wherever my parents decided we were staying at the time for most of my childhood.
I was always a pretty smart and observant kid so, being one of the few white kids where ever I was living most of the time gave me the interesting perspective of being a minority inside what most people would consider a neighborhood of minorities. That being said, this led to me getting into a lot of fights due to being white and looked at as some sort of enemy because my ancestors were oppressors or I shared the same skin color as the racist cop. The picture above is a picture of the Rex Motel which was a place my family and I stayed for a little over a year and as I'm sure you can tell by its name, it was not very pleasant.
One day, I had a kid who was few years older than me I had never met before come up to me while I was playing basketball with some of my friends and started picking a fight with me because I apparently looked like (at 9 years old) a cop who had arrested his brother the night before. I don't have a brother, I don't have any police in my family, fuck, I'm not even from around the area! My friends tried to calm him down, but he was bigger and older than all of us. He kept getting angrier and angrier and eventually hit me. I started running back down the street to my room at the motel. That was the last thing I remembered... I later found out, while I was running away, he picked up a brick and threw it at the back of my head knocking me out before I even hit the ground. A passing car saw this happen and called the cops and chased the kid off back to his trailer up the street from the motel my family and I were staying at.
I was the only white kid on the entire basketball court that day and got 5 stitches in the back of my head at 9 years old because I looked like a cop who may or may not have been profiling his brother; I'll never know.
I say this not to make it a woe-is-me tale, but to highlight the fact that racism exists in many forms through every culture. I'd also like to point out that while this was a reoccurring issue for me over the years, it was usually by the same few small minded people in the various neighborhoods I lived in and I usually had friends around that had my back.
Fundamentally, I believe a lot of the issues that the media, and in turn, our public try to boil down or deflect as a racial issue more often than not is rooted into the socioeconomic division that has plagued America for decades; an issue that I wholeheartedly believe Cryptocurrencies and incredible platforms like Steemit can help alleviate. While I will always concede that black people, without a doubt, are systematically profiled in this country, I've always viewed my perspective of growing up poor in the same sub par conditions as the rest of the community as almost a subculture of it, because even though my family and I faced many of the same issues, sometimes worse issues, as most of the community, being white immediately took the right to struggle or complain about the same issues we all faced away in many aspects.
However, I wouldn't change my upbringing even if I could because it gave me incite into some of the darkest places in America and how people can learn to harbor incredible resentment towards one another over things that neither party has any real control over. Growing up poor in a lot of ways is more of a blessing than a curse really, especially in someone like me. I refused to settle and become some trailer trash or a drug dealer, or some low life uneducated scumbag. Even though I'm still struggling financially, I know that going on 23 years old, I have a good head on my shoulders and I still get up and go to work everyday. Growing up poor teaches you to appreciate what you've got and who you've got. It makes you grow up fast and think on your feet and make decisions from a young age most people will never have to in their entire lives.
You always hear people say they love a good underdog story - well, I'd like to think I'm just passing the "underdog origin story" phase in my life.
Thanks for reading! :)
