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I’ve lived a comfortable life by not being forced to get a job as soon as I was of working age. I had a computer, my own room and I grew up in a nice neighborhood. My environment affected me a lot while I was growing up, by being sheltered to some experiences that I would have received in another area. We do not have to worry about theft or violence, and either it did not occur to me or racism just was not there up until junior high. Now I think back, I had to deal with racism ever since I arrived in America. When I just came to America about 12 years ago, I couldn’t speak a word of English. I distinctively remember American kids would make fun of me, the way I look, the way I dressed and the way I talked. They would also go, ?oooooh Ching chong ching chong chong ching.?It’s scary to know that 12 years ago, people were racially oppressing me. I have always thought of it just as a joke and that they didn’t know Chinese so they were trying to speak my language. How naïve could I have been? But when I think about all those times growing up in junior high and high school, I have been racially oppressed. During junior high, we had a total of 6 Asian males in my grade. It was a predominately white school so I usually hang out with 3 of them and the other 2 Asian kids were usually with the white people. I remember getting called in to the principal’s office with the other 3 kids. The principal suspected of us being an “Asian Gang?because we didn’t hang out with any other people. He even threatened us that if he suspected us of doing anything “Gang Related?he was going to expel all 4 of us. I can understand if we wore clothes that resembled gangs or we were the ones that was always causing troubles. In actuality, we were the opposite of that. Like many adolescents at our age, we always played video games and sports.
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