Reaction to Just Walk By

If I were to have read this article a few years back, my perception of it would've been completely different. Sadly enough, I could've related to many of the white women who were scared with their purses tightly clinging to their bodies when first thinking of taller black men. It wasn't necessarily the way I was I brought up, but through the influence of the only black people in my high school - I feared them. Only to what I could understand as building an identity, the only black males (the total of about 6 in a school of 1000) were the ones all of us heard about getting into fights and trouble all the time. Perhaps it was due to their upbringing in a lower-economic residence (the majority of them lived in the trailer park), and the need to defend oneself, but I didn't understand. I felt threatened by non-rural/suburban culture. It wasn't until I began to interact with people of any sort of urban culture that I began to understand them. They were human, they were kind, they just had a different upbringing than I had. The biggest culture shock was to have a black roommate this year. I never would've imagined it, but it's great how much we have in common. As Nickolodean special as it seems, I've become more and more calm and kind with all sorts of upbringing-varied people.