My background is a mix bag of different things. I was raised in a household that was split. My father for example is an Ashkenazic Jew, which is rooted in Poland, Russia, and Germany. My mother is a Methodist with a background in Germany and Scotland. Right off the get-go my family has had traditional differences that we made work, by combining all the traditions. I personally consider my self Jewish in the most liberal of ways, though Judaism is fairly liberal as is.
Fortunately/unfortuantely I was able to remain ignorant of raicial or ethnic issues until Middle School. I say fortunate because I feel children are being exposed to these issues earlier and earlier. The reason I say unfortunate though is because I learned these issues first hand. For some reason once middle school started being Jewish was not an accepted religion. I had to face people throwing slurs at me on a daily basis, but it was truly evident once being pushed down the stairs for being Jewish.
Growing up when I was little all I really learned was the Civil Rights Movement, and that was during school. During middle school we covered the Holocaust in my Hebrew School, which was after my bouts with discrimination. This topic caused me to take my first steps into becoming a Social Studies major. For the most part though, I agreed with everything I was told, but that was probably because I was never told anything overtly bad about any race.
My view has never really changed. I has always viewed race as both important, and not important. I feel you shouldn't judge people for their race/ethnicity, but I feel it is important because that is what makes life interesting and exciting.
As I said before, I have experienced discrimination on different levels, from simple name calling, to acts of violence. My biggest instance was when I got into a series of fights over people making fun of my ethnicity. I wonder up with the worst punishment of five days of out of school suspension, one of them got a day of out of school and the other got a day of inschool suspension.
That's my background though. I'd be happy to answer any other questions to any of this.
Thank you for your post, Kyle. You may already know this, but Jews played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, Jews have played a significant role in struggles for racial justice in American history in general, for a variety of reasons. We will discuss this later in the semester when we examine the formations of specific ethno-racial groups and also when we discuss issues of white privilege. You may be interested in researching these issues further, though, which is why I mention them now. If you are interested there are several sources I could recommend to you.
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