Reflective Essay: Diversity And Race Equality In My Hometown

Before coming to Bowling Green State University, diversity and race equality was always emphasized in my hometown. As a matter of fact, I do not recall any real conflicts within the schools I attended that arouse due to racial conflicts during my time there. The diversity among the student population and the equality among races here at BGSU was actually a big deciding factor when I was choosing where I wanted to go to college. As a freshman last year I was living in a dorm and luckily got a very wide variety of races, personalities, and backgrounds held by my “floormates” which is exactly what I wanted. After a couple of weeks of settling in and getting to know everyone, I began to meet people that did not have the diversity in their hometowns that mine did, and although this was just a lack of first-hand experience for most, one girl in particular was blatantly racist in her ideology of minorities, blacks in

Red was making false accusations and telling their hall director that Anon was stealing her items (ranging from pencils to medication to money), along with telling the director that she demanded to be moved out of the room as soon as possible because she “felt unsafe being around Anon, given the (fake) circumstances)”. On top of the slander, Red was also verbally confronting Anon about the blatant dissatisfaction she had towards the rooming situation solely because Anon was black, by stating she “acted too ghetto and was just stupid like ‘the rest of them’, and that’s why she grew up poor”. Eventually, Red moved to another dorm on campus once a room opened up and there were no further racial conflicts with the new roommate that moved in with Anon. The theories/perspectives that we have covered in class that relate this slice of my social life is the, the pluralist perspective, the social Darwinist perspective, and the assimilation