I experienced my first significant reality check when I was thirteen years old. In junior high, I attended a school where administrators and students alike embraced ethnic diversity. When I entered into a new school freshman year, I did not find this to be the case. However, this didn’t change the way I attempted to make friends and interact with my peers. Some of my classmates had the same mindset as me, which was making friends with people based on their personality, not their outer appearance. I didn’t notice any problems at my new school until the second semester of my freshman year when I overheard some classmates uttering racist jokes and racial slurs towards some of my classmates and me. Up until then, I had been looking at life through rose-colored glasses. I had not experienced such bigotry before, even though I knew it existed. What was most shocking to me was that this happened to me in a place where I was beginning to feel comfortable. After that, I began to see the world I was living in as it truly is. …show more content…
For example, when my English class was reading To Kill a Mockingbird, one student incessantly volunteered to be Bob Ewell because then he would have the opportunity to say a racial slur without consequences. Although some classmates egged him on and found humor in that, many others felt quite uncomfortable. This fueled my desire to help lessen the racial tensions at the school. I understood that even though every student wouldn’t want to change, it wouldn’t hurt to try bringing positive changes to my classmates’ and my behavior. Unbeknownst to me, many other students felt the same way, and during my junior year, some students formed “Better Illiana through Better Understanding,” a group of students who band together to talk about and resolve social issues around the school. I immediately