By Kevin O'Brien, Staff Writer, Emerson College & Will Stryker, Contributor, Emerson College
A prospective employee illustrates the reasons she isn't racist:
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Summary of Qualifications
References
[email protected]
[email protected]
The Center For the Advancement of the Montreal People of Color
34 Avenue du Mont-Royal E, Montreal, QC, Canada
Rustic Pathways- [email protected]
Kevin O’Brien is a New Jersey native who is studying film production at Emerson College. He is a Pitchfork Historian, accomplished musician, and aspiring Internet celebrity. Girls love him, boys want to be him, you’re just jealous because he’s famous. @kevinobrien_
A prospective employee illustrates the reasons she isn't racist:
_______________________________________________________________
Summary of Qualifications
- First off, I would just like to say that the neighborhood that I come from is 50% blacks and 50% whites, most of whom are from impoverished backgrounds. Walking down my block, you are literally guaranteed to see a black for every white. White men pushing black babies in strollers, white soccer moms cornrowing, and white men pushing fully grown black women in strollers.
- Being from a lower class background, my mother and father worked full time to support their family, and that’s why I grew up with Latoya, my nanny and life long friend. I never realized that Latoya was black, or what that meant even, until I was about six years old in grammar school. One day, I pulled one of Latoya’s famous Haitian Beef patties out of my lunchbox. I noticed that the children around me were turning their noses up, and moving their seats. When I asked my ‘friend’ Kimberly what was going on, she turned to me and said the 3-4 words that have reverberated in my conscious and haunted me every day since. “That’s colored food.” When I went home and asked Latoya what that meant, she turned to me, a tear in her eye, and said “child, you is smart you, is kind, you is important.” I live by these words everyday, the best I can.
- The summer between my junior and senior of High School, I made a pilgrimage to Montréal, Canada as part of a charity project for Rustic Pathways. There, I worked to teach underprivileged children how to read. While I did not process their racial identity, the majority of them were African American.
- While I hate to play the race card, I feel that it is pertinent to my credentials to inform you that I have experienced racial profiling first hand. My father is a descendent of a tribe called Lenni Lenape, making me 1/16th Native American. Because of this, and only this, Cornell University sent me a free application in the mail, just as a matter of filling their “quota.” To them, I was simply a statistic, a race, not an individual. So, in a way very similar to the African American community, I know how it feels to be marginalized.
- Many people think that I am from wealth because of the educational institution I attend. This could not be farther from the truth. I’ll have you know that my parents could NEVER afford the tuition for this school. For this reason, I am on a sizable amount of scholarship money and financial aid. An amount, which I would rather not disclose.
- I watched Spike Lee’s brilliant film Do the Right Thing two times and by the end of the second viewing, I realized that Mookie did, in fact, “do the right thing.”
- I have personally felt weave.
- I think Beyoncé is the most beautiful woman in the world, despite her weave.
- My favorite album of 2010 was Camp by Childish Gambino. It should be noted that this is the year Bon Iver’s self-titled album was released.
- My high school sweetheart, Trevor Berkley, was a black. I remember the summer we met as not the last summer of high school, but the first of my life as a woman. I drove frequently to his house all by myself, and can proudly say that as soon I entered his home, I wasn’t scared at all. He was a year older than I am, and when he left to study at George Washington University, he said that he didn’t think a long distance relationship would work, and I had to respect that.
References
[email protected]
[email protected]
The Center For the Advancement of the Montreal People of Color
34 Avenue du Mont-Royal E, Montreal, QC, Canada
Rustic Pathways- [email protected]
Kevin O’Brien is a New Jersey native who is studying film production at Emerson College. He is a Pitchfork Historian, accomplished musician, and aspiring Internet celebrity. Girls love him, boys want to be him, you’re just jealous because he’s famous. @kevinobrien_