Running Head: Race Awareness Paper 1

Race Awareness Paper

Rutgers University

Michelle Edwards

Running Head: Race Awareness Paper 2

Race Awareness Paper

Steve is a white male raised in North Dakota, and now resides in West Orange, New

Jersey. He grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and

institutional, and had never been exposed to the state's only numerically significant non-white

population, American Indians. He talks about how it was a struggle to resist the racist training

and the ongoing racism of his culture, but has changed significantly from when he was a child.

Today he embraces all races as well as his own because to him it is not about color but how

someone treats you.

Being a white male, Steve understands that he have more privileges than other ethnic

cultures, but feels he should be able to feel okay about being white. For him being white does not

produce only self-criticism, because he believes every individual needs to feel a connection to

community and a history. For instance, he lives with his two children and wife and they mean

everything to him. In his mind, family is three things: a home, love itself, and freedom. Steve

believes that no one could make it through most obstacles that everyday life brings to them

without the love of their family. To him the love of family is like a gigantic bed of pillows you

can fall back on every day for support; a necessity of life. As an African American woman, I

have the same belief. Family helps me to believe in myself, and gives me love and the freedom

to make my own mistakes. There are so many limitations in this world, but to be home and

surrounded by the love my family has built lets me know –just like Steve- that I can fall back and

they will surely help me up-- if not with a helping hand, then with words of wisdom or a smile.

On the other hand, Steve’s customs are quite different than mines. His customs are

based on his family lineage because it has played a huge role on who is society. For example,

his last name can be traced back all the way to the mayflower, and comes from a line of,

Running Head: Race Awareness Paper 3

lawyers and business men. Besides already having wealth from his lineage, he has made a

name for his self as a business man, which he will ultimately pass down to his son. For me, I

do not even know who my grandparents are, much less all my brother s and sisters. I have not

experienced the joy of actually having family customs passed down to me, but indirectly I’ve

learned how to become resilient and strong. To love despite my struggle and to pass these

customs on to my children that have been passed down to me from the Maya Angelou’s and

Martin Luther Kings of the world.

Steve believes the way he is treated in this country is excellent because he benefited

from being a white male throughout his life. At one time in his life, he would not have been

able to say that because he needed to believe that his success in life was due solely to his

individual talent and effort. He saw himself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist.

He believed that he was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that he couldn't see the

fear that was binding him to those myths. For a long time, he lived with the fear that maybe he

didn't really deserve his success that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than

brains and hard work. Today, he has let go of some of that fear when he realized that, indeed,

he was not special, but he was still himself. Steve believes that what he does well, he still can

take pride in, even though the rules under which he works are stacked to his benefit. The way

society treats him is not something he gets to decide he is not afraid to admit that he has

benefited from white privilege. However, to him it means facing a choice about what he does

with his success.