Race_&_My_Community

Race and my community. Race for me growing up was not a big deal, not in my family nor in the surrounding community. At least not to my knowledge; even though I grew up in a White, Jewish community and I am a Christian, African American. I always cherished my upbringing because of my diverse surroundings. When growing up I had many friends, from many backgrounds, race and cultures. Because of this I experienced many years of celebrating Yom Kippur and Roshashannah as well as years of investigating and celebrating Kwanza and the Chinese New Year and my most favorite of all Indian culture and food! My friends and I were called by many the “United Nation Coalition!” We thought it was funny at the time because it didn’t seem weird to any of us to have a African American, Guyanese, African, Hindi, Jewish American and Asian (Chinese) person as close friends as we were. Growing up my community looked nothing like me, well there was a good mix and this is what I strive for in a community now that I am an adult. I love living around different races and cultures it allows for diversity and a comfort that comes with people not being or doing the same things. You tend to look at people in a different light and become comfortable and don’t deal with huge culture shocks when you become and adult or in a place where no one looks like you. The people are different in race, religion; but common in work ethic, moral standings and socialization. The leaders in my community treat everyone in the same vain. When it comes to politics there are always 6 sides, so I can only speak from the things I have seen. The leaders tend to be very fair and always concerned with equality. I believe this is the mindset that is built into the community and was not brought about because of racial tension or any racial issue that have occurred. Many times, there are sensitive situations that occur in a community which make it uncomfortable for the community and it’s leader that end up causing tension for the people within the community and when decisions are made it isn’t seen to be genuine. As stated earlier, the people in my community treat the people in the community pretty much the same. If there are people who don’t get along it is usually just because they don’t get along; not because race is an issue. I have always felt welcome and equal in the households and community activities that I am apart of. When it comes to people who are “different” I feel that different is defined as race but maybe if you are a new family that has moved into the community and even then there is a sense of welcome with most of the community members. I know it sounds fairytale, but this is the place that I grew up and I absolutely love it. It shaped me and made me into the person that I am today, not looking at race or religion, but looking at the individual. My professional career has been somewhat diverse when it comes to things of race. My current position is within a renewable energy company and it is a “Spanish” company. Meaning that our corporate office, technology and core is in Spain. The company moved to the US about 5 years. When I started there were about 97% of Spaniards working for our company 2% other Hispanic (not from Spain), 5% white and .5% other. I loved working within the company because of the culture difference. As we started growing the US, we started hiring more and more technicians and other positions for the company. I thought it was wonderful but soon found out there was much racial tension. Within the first year and a half I hear many conversations that included comments like “Americans need to be hired and the Spaniards need to go back to Spain.” It disturbed me a bit, because I never thought of it like that. So I looked at it in a different light, but loved the diversity, hearing Spanish most of the day and about 75% of the Americans were fluent in Spanish as well. They offered free Spanish and English classes to the employees within the company so that we can learn to communicate better. So, we were taking steps forward, at least I thought. Soon after about 8 months we started to hire interns, and none of them were American. Most of our interns were from Mexico and a few from colleges that were in the US, but still none American. This caused tension between the Americans working within and the Interns. Why' I am not sure. My question to them was, you have a job and the jobs aren’t being taken from Americans, these people are in their Master’s programs and are very qualified; what is the problem' The consensus was “why don’t they stay in Mexico and we hire American interns'” Even with this voiced racial tension, there is nothing written in our handbooks are manuals concerning this. We have a few procedures written on communication in English and Spanish but that is it. Nothing in depth about conduct and racial slurring. He local media because I live about thirty five minutes outside of Philadelphia, is pretty diverse. I see many different faces. Mostly white faces, but there is an Asian, Black and even Middle Eastern anchors and reporters at time. It is very good to see these types of things. I believe it is encouraging subliminally. The similarities of the leaders within my community are that there is a cause for concern for individuals that are within the community. Leaders like our mayor Janice Mirinov and council are well known and respected within the community. The Mayor and many of the council members taught me in middle and high school. So the love for the community and its wellbeing are important. I believe that it helps that we have a history with the leaders within our community. It provides a sense of trust and knowing that their motives, hopefully have not changed due to the authority given. The inequities within my community which I believe that could be dealt with are our police and how they treat people. We have always had issues with police and profiling. It is tragic because our police force even though our community isn’t like this has always had a name for itself. I would deal with the injustice in the police force so that all fairness is given to all race, religions and creeds. The reason is that we want to always respect our law enforcement. When you do, there is less breaking of the law. We want to always set an example for the children that are being raised and by being fair in all matters and standing up injustice is one way to do so. There were many concepts given concerning race and ethnicity within the past 9 weeks. The most profound I believed to be the definitions and examples of bigotry. This may not seem like a great concept, but this example stuck with me like glue. I spoke about how I see so much racism at my job, but it is almost always in the form of timid bigotry. The same people who despise a race or culture are the ones whom embrace those that they have talked down about or condemned. Second, was how we consistently combine Hispanics. I am married to a Puerto Rican/Peruvian and have learned “the hard way” that Puerto Ricans like to be referred to as Puerto Ricans and Mexicans as Mexicans and so on. This is important to them and should be important to us to not offend. Lastly, The way that we view Asian Americans be it Chinese, Japanese or Asian Indians, we seemed to look at these cultures as above the standard minorities in their culture or heritage and still my questions stands as to what is “model”. I have gotten so much out of this class and appreciate the time spent learning. I have taken many things that will help me to be more sensitive concerning issues of race that I may have overlooked or not taken as seriously and to also respect the differences and similarities that are there and embrace them and not despise.