Personal Narrative: My Experience As An African American Student

625 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racial disparities in the education system within the united states

My early educational experience made me feel alienated and discouraged. In addition to the relentless news reports of the statistical inferiority of African American students in comparison to Caucasian students, public schools I attended were meager in racial diversity. While it is normal for a person to be proficient in some areas and deficient in others, as one of the few African Americans in my class, I felt representative of my entire race. Moreover, I was not athletic or coordinated enough for the positive stereotypes, and my grades were not high enough to refute the negative stereotypes. Every C and D served as a harrowing reminder that I was a disgrace to all the people who fought and died for my right to an education. Micro-aggressions occurred daily ranging from jokes about why black kids …show more content…

I decided to take the test, and I scored the second highest in my group. I wanted to go to college, but I felt I had been out of school too long and needed to ease into the process with a community college. I planned to major in psychology and minor in creative writing. I attended New River Community and Technical College for two years. I had two immensely supportive professors during my time there Karen Carter-Harvey (Psychology) and Scott McClanahan (English). I enjoyed the experience, but I decided to move on to pursue my goals since New River did not offer a psychology degree. I transferred to Marshall University, but my experience is limited. Most my classes have been online. I am still working full time, and I am commuting two hours to campus. I am currently not able to afford student housing due to Marshall’s insufficient financial aid package. I am seeking an opportunity to become fully immersed academically as well as socially in a diverse

Show More
Related

  • Courageous Conversations About Race by Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    Authors Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton in Chapter Five of Courageous Conversations About Race broach the topic of race, by asking the reader to evaluate his or her own consciousness of race. According to the authors, in order to address the achievement gaps between African American students and White students, educators should shift their energy towards focusing on the factors that they have direct control of inside the classroom rather than on the factors that influence this achievement disparity between races outside the classroom.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Robert Coles's Children Of Crisis

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    Robert Coles, a psychiatrist, wrote an essay called “Children of Crisis.” He focused on an interview that involved a young boy who was caught in the midst of desegregation in the South. The author’s thesis was as follows; “I think we tend to overlook the fact that Negroes—not only those from the skimpy Negro middle class – have had a widespread interest in education, though to be sure it has necessarily been education of a special kind.” The young boy interviewed, John, explained his troubles he encountered while dealing with desegregation within school. I think Negroes should have the same importance and treated the same as whites are. I do not agree with the other race having to live their life knowing they will be tormented by whites.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: I Am A Black Girl

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the most destructive forces that is destroying young black people in America today is the common cultures wicked image of what an realistic black person is supposed to look like and how that person is supposed to act. African Americans have been struggling for equality since the birth of this land, and the war is very strong. Have you ever been in a situation where you were stereotyped against?

    Read More

  • Brown v. Board of Education

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    African-Americans endured poor academic conditions throughout the entire United States, not just in the south. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, the segregated school had no nurse, lockers, gym or cafeteria. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, buses were not available to the African-American school, but were available to the white schools. In Wilmington, Delaware, no extra curricular activities or buses were offered to the African-American school. In Washington DC, the situation in segregated schools was the same as in the other states, but the textbooks were outdated. (Good, 21-34)

    Read More

  • The Educational Achievement Gap between African American and Minority Students in Elementary Schools in America

    1461 Words  | 3 Pages

    As an African American male, I experienced inequality, and judgment from individuals that have no idea what kind of person I truly am. As a youth, I received a lackluster education, which has resulted in me underachieving in a number of my college classes. It has come to my attention that other colored students are currently experiencing and receiving the same inadequate learning environment and educatio...

    Read More

  • Integration and James Baldwin

    2364 Words  | 5 Pages

    Almost every person who has stepped foot in a college classroom has experienced ethnic diversity within the students in the room. This has not always been the case however. Up until 1954 blacks and whites attended different schools and weren’t allowed the same schooling opportunities. It took a young girl, Linda Brown, and her father, Oliver Brown, as well as many other courageous African American families to stand up to the old law of “separate but equal”, decided in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case in 1892, and fight for equal educational rights for whites and blacks. Even though the Supreme Court decided in favor of the Brown family in 1954, this did not mean that everyone was so eager to accept integration so readily. In fact, right away things hardly changed at all, especially at the higher levels of education. It took a man by the name of James Meredith, the first African American student at the University of Mississippi, to further expand what the Brown’s had started and further break the racial boundaries put around education. Presently school integration has greatly improved but there is still definitely room for improvement. Baldwin was accurate in describing his present day conditions of school segregation in that it was almost a joke and that no “progress” had been made but he was wrong to say that, “the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems” (Baldwin 336). It is American good will and unity that has brought all races together to improve integration in public schools and although there is still room for improvement everyone’s attitudes have shifted to make schooling improved for all students.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: Growing Up As An African American Woman

    1476 Words  | 3 Pages

    Growing up an African American female in poverty is hard. You constantly see your parents worry about making ends meet. They wonder will they be able to make their paycheck reach to the next paycheck. Being young and watching your mother struggle is something you do not understand. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised there until I was 5. In 2005 I move south to live in Abbeville, Al. By this time my mother and father separated and I was being raised by my mother, a single parent. Having moved to a smaller town from the big city was one of my very first obstacles. Everything is done differently in the south from how I was raised. They spoke differently and acted differently. This was just something I was not used too. I always knew how my mom raised

    Read More

  • Education of the Black Male in America

    2210 Words  | 5 Pages

    Today's education is often viewed as failing in its goal of educating students, especially those students characterized as minorities, including African American, Hispanic, and Appalachian students (Quiroz, 1999). Among the minority groups mentioned, African American males are affected most adversely. Research has shown that when Black male students are compared to other students by gender and race they consistently rank lowest in academic achievement (Ogbu, 2003), have the worst attendance record (Voelkle, 1999), are suspended and expelled the most often (Raffaele Mendez, 2003; Staples, 1982), are most likely to drop out of school, and most often fail to graduate from high school or to earn a GED (Pinkney, 2000; Roderick, 2003).

    Read More

  • African American Students and Equal Education

    779 Words  | 2 Pages

    As cliché as it sounds, it is true that many African American students come from very harsh and poverty stricken environments. They tend to go to under resourced schools as well that do not provide the proper knowledge for them to further their education. And even worse, these schools tend to be segregated since they are usually in the harsher parts of a neighborhood. Sadly, it’s the segregated schools are one of the main reasons why black students decide not to go on to pursue a higher education. According to "The Way Out of the Black Poverty Cycle", a black student that attends an integrated suburban school is six times more likely to graduate compared to a segregated under resourced school. An African Americans family structure and the opinions of family members affects if their decision to further their education as well. Many African American children grow up un...

    Read More

  • Problems in the Inner City Schools

    2038 Words  | 5 Pages

    Meanwhile, as the pressure of schools losing their students due to dropout, it is important that the inner city students have the support they need in school or at home, because many years of oppression have kept African-Americans from having the will to do better. Now young African-Americans have that same oppressed feeling in the schools that they are attending. When the students give up it seems as though everyone around them wants to give up. In fact, “In many parts of the country, the problems present withi...

    Read More

  • Racial and Cultural Test Bias, Stereotype Threat and Their Implications

    3792 Words  | 8 Pages

    A substantial amount of educational and psychological research has consistently demonstrated that African American students underperform academically relative to White students. For example, they tend to receive lower grades in school (e.g., Demo & Parker, 1987; Simmons, Brown, Bush, & Blyth, 1978), score lower on standardized tests of intellectual ability (e.g., Bachman, 1970; Herring, 1989; Reyes & Stanic, 1988; Simmons et al., 1978), drop out at higher rates (e.g., American Council on Education, 1990; Steele, 1992), and graduate from college with substantially lower grades than White students (e.g., Nettles, 1988). Such performance gaps can be attributed to any number of factors, such as socioeconomic status, academic preparation, and educational opportunities; however, Steele (1997) pointed out that even when background factors are held constant, subsequent achievement remains lower for minority students. Moreover, much research in this area has focused on how African American students’ lack of motivation and negative attitudes contribute to their inferior academic performance (Ogbu, 1990); yet many Black students often report high educational aspirations (Fordham, 1996; Fine, 1991; Ogbu, 1987, 1990; Hauser & Anderson, 1991), even higher than White students of comparable class background (MacLeod, 1995). What remains certain is the urgent need to explain what accounts for the persistent academic underachievement of Black students.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: Growing Up In A Minority Family College

    299 Words  | 1 Pages

    Growing up in a minority family college has always been a priority. It was the main reason why my parents immigrated to America. They wanted their children to have more opportunities than they could have in Guyana. However, I never really knew anything about college. It would be my next step in life, but I had no idea what was required for college applications until I started the college process. I only knew about “big” time colleges like the Ivy leagues. Harvard and Yale were the dreams of every student, but growing up in Minnesota and being from the Midwest, Northwestern became my “big time” college dream.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: My Life As A Young Black Girl

    355 Words  | 1 Pages

    Throughout my life as a young black girl I have suffered an incredible amount of discrimination and micro-aggressive occasions that have made me at one point second guess my worth. As the result of growing up in a predominately white neighborhood I always felt as if I was prisoner in a world that did not want to see me reach my full potential. I was constantly bullied because I did not fit the normal Eurocentric beauty standards, constantly questioned in disbelief because my hair was too long to be real, and mocked on how dark my skin was. At that age I realized that something was different. In life I would have to work ten times harder than anyone else because of the color of my skin and I was undaunted by this realization.I vowed to devote my life to my education to make a difference land

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: My Experience As A Non-Traditional Student

    1647 Words  | 4 Pages

    The classroom and practicum have been instrumental to me in many ways including my recovery from cancer. When I was released to return to work after my illness, I received more than fifty rejections, most responding that I did not have a degree. Therefore I began my adult education with the goal of getting an associate’s degree. At that time I had no aspirations of going on to choose a major and graduate with a bachelors or masters degree. Little did I know where this journey would take me and the impact that it has had on my life.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: My Personal Experiences Of African Americans

    439 Words  | 1 Pages

    It is not always easy for Caucasians to talk about race especially whether any of their when it comes to their own feelings about it been prejudicial own responses to those of other races are or have No one wants to believe oneself capable of racism or even having made prejudgments about people that are a product of one's fears or other negative emotions For example don't like admitting that I have not always been free of such Even thoughts about other people some of my own race and some of others in though I'm tall now and, because of my size, am almost never in situations which I'm afraid for my safety I used to be small and I used to be afraid of others especially bigger boys who would bully me. Though none were when African American that

    Read More

More about Personal Narrative: My Experience As An African American Student

Open Document