Cultural Bias Exposed In There Are No Children Here

In the book There Are No Children Here written by Alex Kotlowitz, there is a paragraph where he is conveying a cultural bias placed between people of middle class citizens and people with the misfortune of being born into poverty. In this paragraph he writes,
The youngsters had heard that the suburb-bound commuters, from behind the tinted train windows, would shot at them for trespassing on the tracks. One of the boys certain that the commuters were crack shots, burst into tears as the train whisked by. Some of the commuters had heard similar rumors about the neighbor-hood children and worried that, like the cardboard lions in a carnival shooting gal-lery, they might be the target of talented snipers. Indeed, some sat away from the windows

In this paragraph, Kotlowitz makes an important point about how facts over an unknown enemy can distort reality and create unwarranted fear. Even though the reality of the facts between the boys and the commuters was no danger was amiss, they both perceived a real threat from each other. Thus, Kotlowitz is attempting to get the reader to see how cultural bias can create fear and distort the reality over facts.
Kotlowitz is correct with his writing about how fear of the unknown can become a per-son’s worst enemy. I can recall numerous accounts of events that lead to misunderstanding sim-ple because of a distorted perception of reality due to cultural bias. One example of this is when I was younger and living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I had a long commute time from my apartment on the south side of the city up to the Architectural firm I was currently employed

In today’s age of technology, my nephews are usually glued to their PlayStation, but on occasion, they enjoy riding their bikes up to the local playground to shoot a few hoops or climb on the jungle gym. As the story goes, they had just arrived at the basketball court when there was a group of four black kids shooting hoops, shouting, and yelling at each other. To my nephews that had never seen a black person face-to-face; they were intimidated by all the ghetto slang shouting that was coming from the new kids at the basketball court. Unsure of what to do or how to proceed they decided to make their way over to the jungle gym set in an attempt to avoid all contact with the black kids. Before long, the black kids proceed to walk over to my nephews that were playing on the jungle gym set. Before the black kids could get any closer, my nephews jumped onto their bikes and rode off back home telling their story of how a bunch of black kids had almost started a fight with them. The following day my nephews again rode up to the play-ground hoping for a chance to shoot some hoops. Again, the black kids were already at the bas-ketball court. This time however, my nephews had gathered their wits about them preparing for a brawl to take back the basketball court. As my nephews rode onto the courts one