Social Awareness, being "the white kid"

It took two years of being surrounded by people in the business world, and students concerned only with bringing in the big paycheck after graduation for me to realize that's not who I am, nor want to be. I always thought I wanted to be rich, but I became so disgusted with the greed and selfishness I was surrounded by that I wanted to transfer. Midway through my junior year I came to the conclusion that I want to do good in this world. I decided I wanted to get involved with non-profit management, and maybe eventually politics, though it was not an overnight change. It began with freshman year and my first exposure to new cultures and people.

I grew up in a small country town in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I was not given the opportunity to experience much culture beyond that of the blue-collar, white Christian kind. I can count on two hands the number of people I knew who came from a different cultural background. I was friends with most of them and thought I treated them like I treated all my friends. I never understood it when they would make comments about being outcasts, or complain about being watched everywhere they went. They would talk of racism, always being categorized, and being treated differently because of their skin color.

One issue I could never understand was the problem with categorizing. I believed in political correctness, but I could not understand the problem with recognizing differences among people. Why couldn't we call a stone a stone, or a brick a brick? I didn't see why there was a problem recognizing some people as black and others as white, but it was a big problem that resulted in a lot of racial tension in my school.

My freshman year in college I was introduced to a little more culture. Culture shock might be the more appropriate term. I lived with a Dominican from Harlem and a Haitian from Mattapan. Our backgrounds were about as different as it could get, but we became close firends and spent a lot of time together. One weekend we went to a party at an all-girls school in search of pretty. When we got there I realized it was a Black Student Union party. It was over 300 black students - and me: Mr. Hick from the Sticks. I thought about my friends from high school as I became increasingly aware of the fact that I am extremely white.

I felt like every eye was on me, like everyone was giving me dirty looks. Most importantly, I felt like "the white kid," - and I didn't like it. Even the girls who went out of their way to see if I was having a good time made me self-conscious, because I knew they were giving me attention because I'm white. For the first time in my life my race became something that made me different than everyone else, and I was treated differently as a result. At the end of the night I realized our roles had been reversed. I was categorized that night and it made me uncomfortable. Now I understand, to some degree, why it was such a big issue in high school, and remains a big issue today.