Coming to a state university was a major culture shock to me. A lot of people from a high school like mine would agree. I came from an all-white public high school in the deep backwoods of the Deep South. In this area, this isn’t much of a shock. If you’re reading from a big school in Michigan, this is probably shocking. It's the norm, but this was even a shock to me when I moved to this small school. The sad part was that I had gone to a small all-white school before; the only difference was the difference in racism. This new school is the “Yee-yee," rebel flag kind of school. So most of my education was morphed into that racist outlook on Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. I did not realize this bit until my second semester of my sophomore year in college. While learning about the Emmett Till trial, I realized that I had always been told that Till was killed because he was in the wrong and what the killers did was right. I was always told that the Civil Rights Movement was just barbaric. I’m slowly learning all the good parts of the Civil Rights Movement.
People in a small town will always think the worst of African-Americans, and this is what a lot of today’s problems stem from. One afternoon my African-American neighbor and I ran over to a friend's apartment. Now if you saw my neighbor and didn’t know him, you would probably be pretty intimidated. He’s six foot three inches of pure muscle and has a deep voice. When my poor friend opened the door, he turned as white as a ghost and made the same face that I made when my neighbor knocked on my door looking for some vegetable oil. This was something typical for people in our town; we’re taught from an early age to hate and fear African-Americans. An actual quote from a girl back home was, “Aren’t you afraid they’ll rape you?” They aren’t breeding hate in this town; they are basing their teachings on the bad things they hear about on T.V. or one of their own bad experiences. This is just caused by no exposure or bad exposure. You see people in towns like this that see everyone as equal, but you still have some stuck in the 1960s.
Since I have come to college, I’ve met many people from places like mine, who changed just like me and strive to educate the people from home or, in my case, get back at them and prove how wrong they are. I have been blackballed from my high school because of a selfie with my neighbor on Instagram. This is the sad, closed-minded truth for a lot of people like me. I’ve met a lot of people from different races and walks of life. They sometimes laugh at the things I tell them that I was told. One of my African-American friends found out that I was somewhat scared of African-American males. He hid in the bushes by a campus bridge just to watch me jump out of my skin. But all of what was said and done was light-hearted and helped me understand them, and helped them understand people from places like the town I graduated in.
There are good and bad people of every race, gender and religion, and it will take several more generations to get rid of the closed-mindedness of some groups of people. We can preach equality, but if we don’t start acting like we are equal, we might as well be posting a political rant on Facebook. This isn’t a rant; this is to explain the actions of certain people. This also isn’t to defend those people, it's a hope to open their eyes.
