As a child I grew up surrounded by people who were determined to keep me down, and who would constantly use who I was against me. I was conditioned from a very young age to believe that I wouldn't be able to succeed, to achieve my dreams, all because of things I could never control. Because I was a female, because I grew up in a low income family, because the color of my skin was darker than all of theirs. As I grew up the world seemed to tell me the same things, it was advertised to me, I saw my reflection in the depictions of young African-Americans failing. By the 6th grade I had realized this expectation of me, this destiny of failure, and had thought that I was challenging it. Starting then I pushed myself to do better in school, my primary …show more content…
I never wanted to be another statistic, when I marked the boxes "female" and "black" on my benchmark tests I was determined to surpass what was expected of me. At the same time I tried my hardest to hide these aspects of myself, or to degrade them as others had in order to try and separate myself from that same cruelty. But these essays aren’t for you to hear more about my test scores and academic achievements, you have that all in front of you, can see the hard work I’ve put in all these years. These essay are for you to know who I am, but I had never realized that I didn’t even know who I was until just last semester, taking a truly inspiring African-American history class. In this class I learned more about my roots, deeper histories about where my ancestors came from, we were taught things that I had never known before and that weren’t apart of my normal education. For once in my life I felt pride because of who I was, and craved to know more, learn more. You see before this class I had thought that I was evading this destiny of failure with all of my efforts, running from those who hated me because of how I was