Running head: ANALYSIS PAPER 3110

Analysis Paper 3110

Christopher M. Allen
Wayne State University

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Analysis Paper
There are many incidents throughout my life in which because of my color and in the
community where I was brought up I was at the privilege of not being at the wrong hand of
discrimination and on the side of the majority. On the other hand I may have also been the
perpetrator of prejudice to the minority of the area. Also I have been a part of the foster care
system since birth and I have interacted with many different social workers and agencies and
groups homes for children, unfortunately I have witnessed some discrimination amongst my
experience within interactions between social workers and foster parents and social workers and
foster children.
Since the time I was in the seventh grade until graduation I was a resident in a small
suburb of Detroit called Ecorse and attending the closest high school Ecorse Community High
School, which was a predominately African American area so the student were majority are
African American. Living in that area and being mixed between African American and white but
mostly of a darker skin I was privileged to not fall under prejudice and discrimination brought on
by the majority race. When I first entered high school there was a tension between African
American and white students, during this time period a lot of riots and fights broke out some
more gruesome than the next. Fortunately Due to the majority being black I was not a part of
those riot or being the victim of being pulled in unlike some of the unlucky innocent white
students. In one particular incident there was a group of black students randomly attacking
random white students throughout the school.
Also being that the school was in a predominately African American area majority of the
teachers where African American as well. Some discrimination might have not been on the

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agenda but it was still present, teachers and other administration in the school always looked and
favored young men and women of color to thrive, recognize, and honor. I was third highest
ranking student academically in my graduating class; the highest ranking student in my academic
class Shawn was a white student and was very intelligent. I strongly believe that I was more
noticed by the teachers and administrators and students then he was mostly because my skin
color was significantly darker than his.
Being brought up in this environment I may have picked up on a little of the
discrimination and prejudice. Even though I was recognized more than Shawn even when he was
recognized I may have felt in the moment that he should not be recognized because he is white.
When I was and adolescent I felt that all white people could not dance, sing, and were very racist
towards African Americans, but as I have gotten older I learned that is not the case at all. Now
most of my friends are white which is honestly very surprising to me.
Still to this day in age there are practices of institutional discrimination, and it always
isnt a racism type of discrimination always going on. There are cases of sexism, racism, caste,
disability discrimination, and in my case ageism. In May 2011 I was hired as a food clerk at
Meijer which was a very okay job. While I was there even though it was only one occasion I
experienced discrimination in the form of ageism for the first time in my years of working. With
the groups that I worked with a majority of them are older possible between the ages of 35-50,
there is a manager for each department and I worked in the grocery/food stocking area which I
was the youngest stocker. The mangers were also older, which never seemed to be a problem to
me.

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In my one year of working for Meijer I never had a day where I just called off mostly
because I was only there three-four days out of the week. On one particular day I decided to call
off because an hour before I had to go into work I found out that my father passed away. When I
called in to Meijer the oldest manager answered and when noticing who was on the line already
had it in his mind that I was calling off of work. So when I started to explain to him my situation
I was completely cut off and was lectured about how I was probably calling off to go out to some
party and get drunk with some friends and how I dont need to give him an excuse on why Im
calling off. When I actually relayed to him that I was calling off of work because of the death of
my father he instantly felt ashamed and apologized about how he acted. I was most likely the
quietest person also the youngest because I really had no one to connect with on that level so I
honestly and instantly felt discriminated against because I was young and he had a set stereotype
in his head that since I did not sound sick on the phone that I was missing out on work for nonimportant adolescent fun.
The next day I actually went into work not knowing about the grievance policy about
being able to miss a certain amount of days and those days being paid because of the loss of a
family member. I stayed the whole day and wasnt informed by the managers until they got a full
day of work out of me that the policy was in effected. So in my personal opinion I felt
throughout the whole situation I was discriminated against because of my age, and me being in
college. I actually left the job later down the line because I felt more discrimination later down
the line. These instances show how ones own perception of something can be predetermined and
how discrimination can be slightly institutionalized.