Thursday, August 5, 2010

"Night Walker" Blog

The first time I experienced a situation like this and actually recognized what actually was happening and why it was happening was actually this year in Evansville, Indiana. It was just so shocking went it happened I was just speechless. The reason for me being in this state of shock was because I was not raised that way I was raised to treat everyone equal, so seeing this for the first time was just mind blowing.

This year was my first year at the University of Southern Indiana. My hometown is actually an hour away from Evansville were the University of Southern Indiana is located, so I was already pretty familiar with the location. I had actually got an apartment pretty close to campus called copper creek. I was so pumped to move in finally a nice place to myself and of course a roommate. One day I was heading to my car at our apartments and two neighbors from across the street were sitting out side. They were both of the African American decent and me being from a little small town I will be honest I have not been around many people of there race, so I was a little scared at first. Then one of them said “said hey how big are those rims and your car”, so I walked over to them and started talking to them and from then on we all become pretty good friends. We all would hang out and go out and do stuff together from time to time. They were actually from up north so they did not know many people down here so we all got to know a lot of people together since we all were new to the town it was a great friendship and we never had any problems until one night.

The night started off like any other night we all were just hanging out at my apartment. We of course were doing what college kids hanging out listen to music and play with ping-pong balls. My buddies and I had being going a lot lately, but there was actually a shooting earlier that week around the place we normally go to so we know to be extra careful and watch were and what we do at night. We got a ride down town to the places we normally go to and one of my buddies was wearing a hat and none of us normally wear hats, so we didn’t think anything of it. As we approached the door and we all were walking in the security guard says to my buddy he man you cannot come in here with your pants down that far and your hat on like that. We were all in shock we had never had a problem like this before, so of course my buddy got all upset about the situation and started arguing. We all came back out and tried to calm him down. I was really lost for words at first and I just said lets walk away and talk about this. He was not happy he felt he was just being judge because he was of the African American decent and to us that is kind of what it looked like, but what we didn’t know before hand was that they actually o have a dress code there and have always had it. We just figured because of the events earlier that week they were just stereotyping. Once we had the whole situation resolved he took his hat off pulled is pants up and got in. The security guard actually felt bad because he knew our friend was upset and later on came and talked to him and explained everything and we thought everything was cool and it was until we left the place. We decided to leave and go to another place and guess what, yes we ran into the same problem but different reason they actually said he could not come in because he was wearing a white t-shirt. This is were he drew the line, he said he was over it and was just going to go home and we all felt horrible, but there was nothing we could do. He ended up getting a ride home and he was not mad at us and told us to go have fun he understand we could not do anything about it. That right there was my first run in with that type of situation and I am sure it will not be the last but we just have to move on and ignore ignorant people like that.

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