Unlearning Biases: A Personal Journey into Racial Awareness

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Ever since the beginning of my schooling, I have been told never to judge a book by its cover yet was pressured by society to believe false ideas. This quote can be referenced to not only real stories, but also towards people and their appearance. Before the last couple of years, I was always taught that whites lived a more successful life and were never the problem in news. The unlearning in my life was more of a progression overtime instead of one event. With all of my experience on social media and from taking a high school class on one of the biggest racial catastrophes, I have started to unlearn many biases and prejudices I was taught at a young age. To start off, my life has always been secluded by diversity. I grew up in a town of thirty thousand people in the middle of Nebraska. During my elementary school years, my school consisted of a majority of white students and a few Hispanics. Believe it or not, there was only one African American boy and he ended up changing schools. This is how it was clear up until high school where I graduated with a class of three hundred and fifty classmates and only five of them came from African American heritage. Because of this, I was taught primarily white side of views in history classes, or never even talked about black cultures at all. I finely remember a poster on the wall of a white hand holding a …show more content…

I believe it is important to unlearn the things we are taught that are not true or bias. After my transition into a new city, I no longer believe even for a little bit that there is a superior race. Everyone in society should be treated as equal and stereotypes should be abolished. My unlearning of racial standards started during my last year in high school and is still happening to this day. It is moments like these that I wish I came from a bigger town just so I would have had a better understanding on the prejudices in our

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