Advanced Essay #2

Zaeem Wallace-Parker

11/23/15

Water Stream

English 3

Advanced Essay #2

In my society, young black men my age are becoming more and more violent and criminal that it causes all young men in my society to be stereotyped. I was one of the young men leading into the violent and criminal path. Smoking, fighting and being disrespectful were some of the things I began to do. However, I moved to Georgia and lived there for 3 ½ years and I’ve changed my ways. Although I’ve changed, the other young men in my society haven’t. Therefore, it causes the young men headed in a good path to be stereotyped as a defiant and criminal teens.

One night this summer, I came in the house and the smell of baked fish rushed into my nostrils. I dropped my gym bag and made my way straight to the kitchen. My mom was in the kitchen preparing dinner how she normally does. “ What you cooking mom?” I asked, and without answering my question she quickly stepped in front of my face and said “Were you smoking?”. I rapidly responded no because I didn’t understand what would have made her ask me that question. “So why your eyes red?” she asked. At this point it became offensive because I always hear people say, your eyes are low, your eyes are chinky, or your eyes are red. “Mom I wasn’t smoking” I answered aggressively. She ended up backing off and returned to cooking so, I figured she decided to leave the situation alone. Little did I  know I was wrong. 20-30 minutes later, my uncle came to my house. When he came in he said “ Damn what’s that bump on your face… Let me see”. Now I’m not a child, I know he wanted to look into my eyes and see if I was high, I knew if I backed down it would have seem like I was lying about smoking. So I brought my face close to his eyes and let him stare deep into my eyes. He was staring so hard, it felt like he was trying to see into my soul. He stared into my eyes for a good 10 seconds and then said “ that bump is big”. I played along with his schemes and said “ yeah it just got there like 2 days ago.” Then, he turned away from me and went into my mom’s room and shut the door. I could hear them whispering but, I couldn’t comprehend what they were saying. Stuff like this just shows the issue within my society. That’s what most males of my culture and age is doing in my society therefore, I was justified and seen as one of them because my eyes were red.

My mom should know me well enough to know that I would never go back to the life I used to live, the life that the boys my age in my society are living. I’m an athlete now and I actually want to get somewhere with the sport I play. Living the life my society portrays will only hold me back from my dream and not only me but the other young men in my society that have dreams too. Absolutely all my friends, not 1 person singled out, smokes and do dumb (illegal) stuff. But not only my friends but my family too also do the same stuff. My cousins that are around my age are either in juvie, on their way to juvie, or occupied with their child. No matter where I go and who I’m with I always feel like I am the oldest and the most responsible. Even when I am around grown men that watched me grow up as a child. These grown men are not my uncles or cousins, they are just grown men that live in my neighborhood. When I’m around them, I still feel like I’m the oldest and the most responsible because the contribute to the stereotype holding down my society. With them I think like, how are you all grown men but I have more money in pocket than you do and I don’t even have a job? All they do is waste their money on weed and would waste it on clothes and shoes if they had enough to splurge on that stuff.

People outside my society use this stereotype of my society so much. Everytime South Philly comes into the equation of conversation with my friends here at school, I here the same stuff from people who never really experienced the South Philly experience. “South Philly’s the mix”, “You’ll get robbed if you go there”, “Zaeem you don’t need to be outside”, those are the most common things said when or if we talk about my society here at school. My society displayed itself this way and has been long before I was even born.

However, stuff that happens in my society happens all over the world. As humans, we are going to naturally judge a book by it’s cover until we control our thoughts and think neutrally. Until then, our thoughts will always be biased, not perspective.