Walking While Black By Garnette Cadogan

Uneven Geographies of Race and Class The story “Walking While Black” by Garnette Cadogan from topic 8 follows a young man from Kingston, Jamaica and his struggles due to being a person of color. Let’s start off with some backstory before we get into it. Like I said, this young man grew up in Jamaica. He would walk the streets like nothing, at one point he even described his way home as home. When it was time for him to go to college, he decided to attend school all the way in New Orleans and that is where things started to change. He noticed people treating him a certain way due to the color of his skin, something he had never experienced in the streets of Jamaica. I would say that this is somewhat a representation of what it is like out there for people of color.

People were afraid of him. For instance, when he would walk by, women would hold onto their bags, white men would greet him nervously, and the one that surprised me the most was when he tried to help out a man when his wheelchair got stuck and instead of getting thanked, he got threatened. Whenever he would get asked for his ID, he would “accidentally” pull out his school ID I assume to prove that he was no harm, no thug on the street looking for trouble, but a man who is trying to achieve something, someone who is educated. Sad to say that people of color experience that more often than they should. There has been may occasions where they get followed around stores because workers feel as if they’re going to steal