Bi-Racial in Society - Living in Color

Running head: LIVING IN COLOR

Living In Color

Jesse Robey

Axia College

In your community when your ethnic background puts you on both sides of the racial spectrum do you show support for both groups or lean more towards one group than another. Additionally, how do I find my stance on issues and identify myself with them?

In Sacramento California you will find that I resemble a bi-racial man. On certain days I can appear to look like a full fledge Caucasian male and on others an African-American male. With members and residents in my community it has been quite interesting with how I am spoken to and approached. Very few in my community look like me and honestly in my part of town bi-racial children are just now starting to appear in schools. In my community you'll find two types of groups in people: Young African-American families just starting out in home ownership and also retired Caucasians that have lived in the area for decades and many are retired from the military.

It has been clearly evident with how the media has been portraying the African-American youth as opposed to the Caucasians, Hispanics, Russian, and Asian youth. The media has been negatively showing the impact of the African-American youth in my community by showing how drugs, lack of education, and single parent homes are ruining a generation. Now it is clearly my opinion that these same problems are not only affecting blacks alone but as well as members of the minority and majority of my communities’ population. With that being said I know nine times out of ten the media often report stories or information without completely verify statistics and/or fully researching the facts.

Now it may be worth mentioning that in my area we also house the continuation high school and adult school. Not that it is a bad thing but the predominate ethnic group that attends these schools are of African-American. So most of the communities perception based on casual conversations blame the neighborhood graffiti, trash, and crime on these students that walk through the neighborhoods. Honestly, that's a blind observation in my opinion. Since I am in the “know” of graffiti symbols, I have often found in my area that the graffiti that is viewable primarily belongs to Hispanic gangs and not those of blacks. Might this also be a possible influence into racial profiling of African-Americans as I have personally experienced several times just driving home.

Often I drive pass a group of minorities being talked to by police officers and none of the group members appear to be black or white. I wonder why as a community we haven’t petition to ask questions from our council members about our communities graffiti issues, crime increases, and trash problem. Maybe it’s fear for some that hold them back. Not so for me, I unfortunately don’t have the time or resources to execute a change in my community but maybe I am just making excuses. I could write a letter, collect petitions and show my worth to my community and my people.

Being apart of a city trying to remove it’s image of a cow town and into a major city has stirred some of my areas into a panic. As they are used to peace and quiet from a neighbor they once knew. Now, new faces, younger generations, and big city problems in a small city setting. Honestly, it wasn’t that long ago in my area of Sacramento that certain groups held violent gatherings on horseback to prevent minorities from moving in to the area or going to area schools. Pretty sad and scary since this was only about fifteen to twenty-five years ago.

In this area developers have been hesitant to bring any new projects into the community like new homes, new shopping areas, and parks due to the instability of relations between groups. Now maybe I am painting my area like a war zone but it’s far from that. We don’t have shootings, crime