I Was Born a White, Middle Class American

Culture and identity are two very strange ideas. They are received at a very young age, yet they are very hard to give to someone else. They will affect you for the rest or your life, yet for the most part you are born into them. However, they soon become very important to us and we cannot, no matter what we do, live without them. They are a part of us, and a vital aspect of society. However, it took me a very long time to recognize that I had an identity and a little while after that before I knew what it was.

My entire life I have been a middle class white male. I was born into this identity and most likely will die in this identity. My entire family fits into the same class of society. I could probably wear a sign that read, “Average American” and no one would ever tell me that I was not. The neighborhood that I grew up in is middle class, and a majority of the neighbors that I have are also white and of the same class. When I was younger, me and my friends would play video games at my house until my mom would tell us to go outside. It seemed like the summers lasted longer then. This is probably because we spent everyday looking for something to do, whereas these days I spend my summers looking for ways to get out of doing what I am supposed to do.

We would go to the local elementary and middle schools where there was a small creek and pond. We would catch crayfish, bugs, and frogs only to let them go after we celebrated our great achievement. We would play tag, football, soccer, hockey and baseball at someone’s house or at the athletic fields of the schools. And all of us were of the same culture and class. It was always three to fifteen young white males doing what young white males usually do. A few of the other kids were Italian, which apparently is not Caucasian, but we did not know that.