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Race and Your Community

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Race and Your Community
John Marker
ETH 125
August 22, 2010
Tameka Williams-Bruce

Race and Your Community
I was born and raised in Pocatello, Idaho, which consisted then, with a population of about 26,131 people within the community during the earlier nineteen fifties. From what I recall during these times, there were 4 ethnic groups which consisted mostly of whites, at five percent, Native American Indians at three percent, African Americans, and one percent Mexican, and Asian Americans.
As I grew up and began attending kinder-garden, the only people I knew were our two white neighboring families and their children. I knew what the Indians looked like because they walked past our yard on the way to patronizing at the three bars two blocks away. I just knew they were different in skin tones and black hair and some silver. After two days of kinder-garden there were 4 Indian boys added to our class. Two of the Indian boys sat next to me trying to talk to me, but were rude and were always making noise and disrupting the class. I became close friends with them several weeks later, and we all grew up and graduated together. It wasn’t until half way through the tenth grade that I met our first Chinese, Japanese Americans that transferred from California to Idaho.
For me, this was a great awakening as these new students were nothing like I was raised to believe. The Japanese American girl was distant towards all other students and teachers, so I asked my Father if he knew why she was distancing herself from us like that and he said her Family had been part of the Japanese American families that were placed in internment camps in the United States during World War II. I never understood what he was talking about, but I did become good friends with her by the end of the year. In every community, there are different ethnic groups, and these groups interact

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