A Change-up

In the cut-throat world of high school baseball, sometimes the competition and the will to win can go to your head. Nearly every single game we played our entire focus was on winning the game. In our district of 8 teams, 7 of them were pretty evenly matched from year to year. However, there was one team that never had a chance to win beacuse the school had a low budget, and many of the kids on the team were underprivileged. They did not have batting cages, top of the line coaches, brand new bats or gloves, a great field to play on, or the talent to even compete with any of the other teams in our district. In addition, nearly all of their players were African-American while the other teams usually averaged only one or two black players per team. When it came time to play them, some of the teams in our district considered that game to be a "stat-pat", meaning that they would run up the score, sometimes scoring 30 or more runs, to boost their overall stats for the year. However, when we played them, we would first make sure that we scored enough to win, then we would slow down by putting in our back-ups and stopping at every base instead of going for doubles and triples, so as not to run up the score. We always respected them, and we also tried to joke around and make friends with many of them. What we learned was that even though they had no chance to win, they always had fun in what they were doing, just having a good time until the game was over. If they made an error, they would'nt get pissed off about it, they would just shrug it off and try their best the next play. We learned that it was just a game, and everything wasn't always about winning.

Five

When I was five I had my first job. I was not a deprived or tortured child, but people automatically said my parents were taking away from my childhood. Not only was this a conflict but the fact that I was a little girl, men that were working with me also assumed I could not do the work. I was not doing the same type of work they were doing, but I was still working. Things such as "you don't belong here, go play with your dollies" were said and I usually just brushed it off my shoulder. I felt that I was being judged because of my age and my gender and not for the strong hard-working individual I was. A few years later I was working at a rod and gun club pulling trap (clay target shooting) and they were looking for two more people to pull trap. I had brought someone younger with me who I thought would be a great employee because he was younger than me the committee members of the trap squad felt that he would not be able to fill the expectations of the job. I reacted by saying you had hired me at the age of 13, just one year older than him. Why would he not be able to work here? He is more than capable of actually doing the job.
Eventually my younger friend was hired and did work for a while there until he found another job where he was not judged immediately because of his age.

samantha

Typicall RVA

Growing up in Richmond, Va, one very red state on the political maps, proved to be very hard for me. I arrived at my political opinions from my own knowledge and my own thoughts, however I do happen to share the same beliefs as my parents. This has always make it hard becuase I never exactly fit in with the same political views as my most of my peers at my high school. I often felt left out becuase there were special activies which a large part of my friends participated in, but these events often tied in politics along with it, often leaving me out. If anything I was descriminated because of the way I felt towards war, etc. I have always been one to listen to everyone's opinion, and to never interrupt, however very few people will listen to something that clashes their own personal beliefs and not interrupt, unlike me. I feel like this kind of discrimination happens everyday, and if everyone was more open minded, better decision making would evolve there would be less disagreements and wars.

Heritage and Discrimination

A lot of people can not tell just by looking at me, but I am of iranian heritage.(I know it is a suprise, everyone thinks I am mexican)After the events of September 11th pretty much all people of middle eastern decent were viewed as the "bad guys". At this time I was in seventh grade which was already a tough year for all preteens. As children do they immediatly want to place the blame and harrass others. So because I was from a middle eastern background I immediatly caught rude remarks right off the bat. At first I was extremely upset about catching crap for something that I had no part in, just for being born with middle eastern blood. After awhile I realized that the remarks I was getting was no less then the remark I was handing back. Eventually it all became one big joke as things started to blow over. All in all I was not really affected by it cause I see myself as strong individual, but I can see how discrimination is a huge subject with people in America.

High School Discrimination

In high school I had two friends who were Asian twins born in Korea and were adopted by a family from America. They had spent their entire lives in Blacksburg and even had a southern accent. They weren’t very good at school and one of the twins had a very high temper. During our sophomore year we were in the cafeteria and about 6 upperclassmen began to toss things over at one of the twins named Cody just to see him get angry and start yelling at them because they thought it was funny to see him act like that. Before that day I was cool with Cody but even I didn’t really understand him; however, after what had happened I understood where he got his high temper. It was from his entire life of people not understanding him and even making fun of him for who he was. They weren’t picking on me or anyone else at that table they were just singling him out. I was totally disgusted by the way they were acting towards Cody, and after that day I really respected him for who he was. I would have completely changed my appearance if people had made fun of me like that, but somehow he was able to go on the exact same way as before, which I thought was impressive.

Post

When I was younger every year I would always show sheep at the Virginia State Fair for 2 weeks. During the weekdays everything was fine and the exhibitors were free to do what ever we wanted during times we weren't showing but during the weekends especially at night the police would ask us to leave early and go to our hotels before it got dark. When I was younger I never questioned why we were supposed to leave early but as I got older I began to wonder why. When one of my parents friends told me I was shocked. Gangs would come onto the fair grounds and look for exhibitors and would harass and torment them calling them names and throwing things and create a big ruckus. Apparently many of the African American gangs associated farmers and stocks men with the south and would target them. Every year there was usually at least one gun fight and the cops eventually sent out armed cops to patrol the fair grounds to try to keep order.

Apparently the gangs thought that all the showsman were from the south and held a confederate attitude, which was not true at all. The exhibitors come from all around the state and I have never met a single one who was racist they all are friendly people who are fun to be around, yet many of the gang members associated farmers as raciest and would target us. I think it is a shame that they felt that way but changing an entire groups opinion is a lot harder than changing a single persons opinion.

Meghan S.

September 27, 2007 11:13 AM