When I was a little boy, I had a repertoire of cultural events that my parents and I would attend. Some events were lackadaisical--like going to church every Sunday morning. And others were buzzy and delightful--like when we would dress in beaded girdles around the shank and the waist and also brandish other instruments of music such as the maraca. We would wear around the head and the shins wreaths of plumage, and with each footfall, the beads would chime, creating a hullabaloo of cheery music. As a little kid, although I didn’t know it at the time, this ensemble of music and church going were as much a part a my culture as they were a part of my “real” identity as I had come to know it at the time: my being black.
I cannot definitively describe
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True though it might be that music, dance, and christianity are a part of my identity, they don’t prominently show as much as much as my black skin. When I meet a stranger for example, my black skin is the first impression that I give. The stranger doesn’t recognize how great a dancer that I am, or what kind of music that I like, or the fact that I am christian. The stranger doesn’t see any of these things. What they see instead along my skin are the stereotypes associated with my black skin in order to predict how I might behave. If the stranger is white, they will probably think of me as unintelligent, potentially criminal, addicted to drugs, and potentially athletic. As a black student I have learned to avail myself of these barriers by breaking them. Ever since I arrived here in Canada, a sizable part of my life has been dedicated to breaking these stereotypes by pushing myself in school, avoiding druggies, and committing myself against violence. If I had been of white skin, I doubt I would be so self-aware as I