Race and My Community
Prassedes Ciappolino Williams
ETH/125
Axia College of the University of Phoenix
In late 2007, I, along with my mother, moved to Raleigh North Carolina to be with my future husband. I was pregnant and had high hopes for the future. I had recently gotten out of the military and was still getting adjusted to civilian life when we moved. It hadn’t dawned on me how much my life would change. See, my husband is African-American and I am Argentinean-Italian American, my mother is Argentinean and my child will be mixed in a capital of a southern state that still had lots of evident history of its racial past, lots of lingering racism, and at the same time lots of opportunity.
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city. It is the second largest country in South America by land area, and eighth in the world, but none of this information is as important to most Americans as this next fact. Most Argentinean natives are fare skinned light haired people, so most people automatically think that I’m white. There are a lot of other Hispanic groups in Raleigh, but as an Argentinean-American, I blend in. Most people would think that this is a good thing, but I am proud of my heritage and that of my child’s. Going to shopping is always hard. Other Spanish speaking like to say things to each other about you right in your face, but because you don’t look like then, they automatically think that you don’t speak their language. It hurts, because it’s like you’re being excluded from a club that you should belong to. But, they can keep their membership because my mother always taught me not to judge a person by their skin color, but by their actions and their character.
You would think that by the year 2009, that little clubs like these would be forgotten or abolished by now, but the simple truth is that people would rather be...