Personal Narrative: Racial Divide In The United States

In the late 1950’s there was a great racial divide in the southern part of the United States. This racial divide consisted of the segregation of schools, public facilities, and public transportation. Violence against black people was common at polling places, and any attempt at the integration of schools. Many blacks suffered greatly at the hands of the white community. Blacks were often the victims of beatings, unlawful incarceration, bombings, even kidnapping and hanging. During this period, it was illegal in many southern states for couples of different races to intermingle with one another, often leading to prosecution and incarceration of couples who chose to interracially marry. Although this discrimination was common place in

I imagined myself doing something so dramatic as to literately change my appearance to fit into another race and culture. After some personal reflection, I realized I have spent my entire life living what I now consider, to be a very sheltered life. I lived and grew up in a majority white community and culture. I can only imagine the shock felt by Griffin when he realized the depth of changed identity which would now force him to exist in a culture he really knew nothing about. As in many other cultures, many people living in the United States assign relatively enormous importance to skin color. Some even go as far as to place their entire identity on their racial makeup. These people tend to separate color into black and white, claiming that having any African ancestry, even over several generations, may make a person identify with being black.

In the United States, white people have historically been associated with superiority, while black people have historically been associated with inferiority. Skin color is not simply divided into black and white, but also to the degree of blackness. Most Americans prefer lighter skin to darker skin, with lighter skinned blacks often experiencing less discrimination than dark-skinned blacks, who must deal with even more barriers than others in their