{"id":2448,"date":"2015-12-08T21:55:15","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T02:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/?p=2448"},"modified":"2015-12-18T17:01:07","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T22:01:07","slug":"oreilly-reflective-change-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/2015\/12\/08\/oreilly-reflective-change-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"That’s Our Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heading out to journey anywhere with my friends is always an adventure. That being said, I didn\u2019t say the adventures are always positive. Due to the fact that there isn\u2019t much to do in my small town, we usually just hang out at the mall. As boisterous and uncontrollable as my friends are, something bad was bound to happen with five carefree teenage boys strolling through the mall with nothing to do. We made a pit stop in the department store, Sears, just to cut through to get tot the food court and even look around. As always, the clerks were on high alert, as the only real danger to their store is a teenage boy. Along the way, one of my acquaintances, who I\u2019ll no longer refer to as my friend, thought it would be hilarious to steal a cheap cologne bottle. The four of us told him to put it back, but I guess he really needed to have this trophy. Just our luck, as we were leaving the food court, three security guards stopped me and asked me to empty my pockets. I had nothing, but in the bush behind where I was sitting was a small blue bottle of cologne. I looked over at my old acquaintance who just stared blankly. Within two hours, I was in the parking lot with my mom, clear of any charges. Fortunately, my friends backed me up and revealed the real culprit. Even though the real thief was caught, and he would\u2019ve been fine with me taking the blame, I had already moved on. The fact that I was chosen out of my four other friends to be the culprit was the real problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was profiled to be the culprit. My four other friends in vineyard vines and sperry\u2019s couldn\u2019t have been involved right? It must\u2019ve been the big kid in sweatpants and a Kiss Alive II shirt that stole it. He\u2019s got a beard and big zip up, ya, that’s our guy.<\/span><\/p>\n

I definitely saw myself differently after this. In my mind, I was always the real target. I always think about what I wear when I go out, what will people see in me. Are their assumptions about me necessary to do their job? I knew I couldn\u2019t stroll into a Walmart with baggy sweats and a hood over my head, that would be asking to be watched. Obviously, people have a job to do, and make sure people don\u2019t wrong them. But now I can see where people of color come from. They can\u2019t enter a place and leave their skin color at the door. Stereotypes put targets on their backs, and it’s something that they can\u2019t escape. For all of this time I thought I was the real target, but now I can see how sheltered I was from what\u2019s really going on. <\/span><\/p>\n

From 1997 to 2015, I\u2019ve lived extremely comfortably. Sure, terrorism and gun violence have been frequently used terms during my short lifetime, but it\u2019s never bothered me. Racism has been a carefully used term until fairly recently, when my eyes started to open. It might have something to do that I\u2019m 18 years old and still growing from a kid into an adult. It could be because I\u2019ve been shielded my entire life from the negativity I see today. Or, it can be attributed to the growing public awareness of such things, to bring to light what is really going on in our country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid news reports of police violence and a #blacklivesmatter campaign, I still wasn\u2019t fully convinced that these events warranted a public outbreak. Although, the flow was constant; it seems that every day somebody was killed on the basis of race. I was seeing a country that just needed to calm down a little. The microcosm of my world, Trinity College, forced me to see what I\u2019d forever put in the rear view mirror.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was convinced of what I know now after a 28 degree five am trash pickup with my brothers on the football team. We\u2019d been assigned stations along campus, splitting us into groups chosen for us. Although we\u2019re all brothers on the team, we tend to separate into little groups. The athletes of color often associate with other athletes of color, and it doesn\u2019t mean that they can\u2019t or won\u2019t associate with us white guys. It\u2019s they way things are. My squad was assigned to a portion of Vernon Street, the main road running through campus. It\u2019s early, still dark with the sun on the rise, and \u00a0a group of bundled up football players trudging through leaves grabbing trash. We weren\u2019t making a scene, but we did catch the attention of campus safety officers on duty. As they raced up the street, me and four white students were passed over. But, twenty yards ahead, the three black students on my team were stopped and questioned. I had just witnessed what I had nearly denied the past couple of years in my life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing came of it, the officer just stopped to ask sternly what they were doing and why. They obviously knew they were targeted, and joked about the instance later about why they were targeted, but this stuck with me. We were actively doing a nice thing for the campus, and the guys were still mistaken for criminals. This young students, at an elite liberal arts school, literally cannot leave their rooms without facing some kind of judgement. How are we not passed that yet?<\/span><\/p>\n

In our seminar, there has been a lot of discussion on our own issues with campus safety. I absolutely would not have been able to contribute if it wasn\u2019t for my experience on Vernon. During the walk out on campus, students highlighted the mistrust campus safety had for them. Students were unable to enter their own dorms, where they live, unless the presented an ID. Other students were constantly mistaken for a \u201cHartford Local\u201d because they were a black male.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shannon described her own feelings in our seminar when she hears the term \u201cHartford Local.\u201d I\u2019ve never really seen it as a derogatory term until she spoke up. The fact is, Shannon <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> a Hartford local. A well known Trinity student athlete who has every right to be here is an actual resident of the city of Hartford. This put a face to what me and other people were saying. We see males of color on campus as violent and harmful. Of course there have been incidents that need to be addressed, but it\u2019s a shame that a student who is the same as me and has the same rights to be where I am, maybe even more qualified, is facing this kind of adversity. <\/span><\/p>\n

Trinity has helped me grow in my first semester because it is a microcosm of what is really going on. Yes, times have changed, and I thought we were done. It\u2019s become extremely evident in recent months that we aren\u2019t done with this racism. If a student of color can\u2019t enter his\/ her dorm without a second thought, and the innocent black teenager is shot because he \u201cFits a profile,\u201d we clearly aren\u2019t done. Although all of this has just recently come to my attention, I truly do now stand for the equal rights of everyone. We have to get rid of the stigma surrounding people of color, or wait until another civil war. It might sound extreme, but for this to go on for as long as it has is pathetic. We can say that America is a free country for everyone, but as we might be farther along than some other countries, it’s still time to shape up.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heading out to journey anywhere with my friends is always an adventure. That being said, I didn\u2019t say the adventures are always positive. Due to the fact that there isn\u2019t much to do in my small town, we usually just hang out at the mall. As boisterous and uncontrollable as my friends are, something bad … Continue reading That’s Our Guy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1282,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2561,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448\/revisions\/2561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/colorandmoney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}