Personal History - Essay Example

Close on the heels of the above phrase, is another equally important phrase that says “Never judge a book by its cover” meaning that what’s on the outside doesn’t necessarily have to be on the inside. Racial discrimination has always been a hot topic for debate and never seems to lose its steam. One of the main reasons for such discrimination and segregation is the color of a person’s skin. For people possessing a racist attitude, blacks have always been targeted lot because of the color of their skin.

Being a black myself, I have come across many instances that made me reflect how human beings just like myself could have such prejudices against the color of one’s skin. Los Angeles, California was my birthplace and home town, where I had lived all these years. Since my mom was working in another state I had been brought up by my dear grandparent who doted on me and did the best they could keep me healthy and happy. I studied in our neighborhood school, called South Central, but I was never sent alone.

I was either driven to school or taken by bus. There was no way that my grandparent would agree to send me to play with the other children in the street and so I had to be content to play with my friends at school. Though I had never been called a “nigger”, yet I have heard that many of my family members were called so. It hurts me no end to think that human beings could be so callous and unreasonable just on the basis of the color of a person’s skin. On many accounts, I too was advised that I shouldn’t play with white children because they didn’t like my color.

Looking back at these incidents are sometimes wonder how cruel people could be. Author Cathy Thompson (1988) states in her book titled ‘The Oreo Cookie’ that clearly brings out the way I had felt at the time – “I did not have a problem with this situation until other people came into the picture and forced me to realize that I was different, very