Growing up in Philadelphia Pennsylvania was not easy. It was the farthest from easy. Don’t be fooled by the history of the city. Philadelphia is no place for people who have no business being there. The town that I grew up in was north Philadelphia. Some call it the hood, others call it the ghetto, but I have never heard anyone ever call it beautiful, which I can agree with.

Although Philly is my hometown from which I was born and raised, I never loved it, or even liked it. Even when the sun was shining on a cloudless, beautiful day, the littler and run down homes and ugliness of the city had always made my birth place seem so gray and dull. I was almost always afraid of what someone might have in their coat pocket unless someone I trusted was with me. But even though not all of Philly was bad, there is a lot of Philly that is.

For example, despite the fact that a lot of people are blind and ignorant to racism, it still exists. The majority of people like to live in their own worlds an ignore it or sweep it under the carpet, dust their hands off, and pretend that it vanished. It hasn’t gone anywhere, now it’s just more transparent and easier to walk around. I would have probably grown up the same way as many other Americans, being blind to reality, except for the fact that I saw it much too often.

Growing up my classmates always knew that I was different, even when I entered a new school. I always got the same comments and retorts from my peers, most of which were racist jokes. The most common one was “You talk like a white person”, even when I was in the third grade kids said this to me. That I “Acted like a white person” or I’m “A white girl in a black girl’s body” they even call me an “Oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside). It had never offended me much. I talked proper and held myself in a respectable manner because that was the way I was raised, to talk for people to hear and understand and to act as if I had some sense.

There was a day at my elementary school when I heard about a new girl who arrived the day before. She was in the fourth grade while I was in the fifth. The majority of my middle school was African American while the others were Hispanic. Other than that there were no other races, I know this because it was an extremely small school and when the new girl of a different race arrived it was all the talk of the school.

I never met the new girl. However, I did glance at her a few times during recess. She was white with long blond hair and blue eyes. She had a younger brother who went to same school as us but I know that that school was the last place that they should have been. They were white. The consequence of being white was being bullied. Her little brother, so small and innocent, was bullied every day. And there was no doubt in my mind that she was too. One day when I was playing with my friends on the far side of the school yard I saw a group of the younger boys playing around the trash can. It was only when they dispersed when I realized that they had her younger brother in the trash can. As much as I wanted to help I regret not taking action that day.

Her and her brother did have some good friends at that horrible school. I saw then sometimes playing tag and kick ball on the opposite side of the school yard. But I had realized that this world is no place for children.

Another example of how North Philly is no utopia is when I witnessed a shooting. My mom had just picked us up from school and we were on our way to visit our grandmother. When we had pulled up in front of my grandma’s house we were about to park when my older sister noticed two men fighting on the sidewalk near our grandma’s house. My mom, little sister, older sister and I all looked towards the action. We had all thought that they were play fighting until one of the men broke away and started running towards our car. He rolled over the hood and ducked behind it as the other person pulled out a gun. At the time, I was at an age when no child should know the feeling of violence as well as I had. But the rest of my family and I knew exactly what was taking place, a shooting. As soon as my mom saw the gun she honked the horn and yelled for us to put our heads down. The gun went off.

As my mom sped off down the street I looked back and saw the smile on the shooters face as he ran in the opposite direction. My mom called the cops as soon as she was around the corner. She had explained to them where we were and exactly what had occurred. By time we had circled the block the police were there and the victim was gone. Later that week we received word on the victims’ health. He was alive, and he was only hit in the ankle. We were thankful he was injured rather than murdered.

Growing up I had always know the world to be evil and cruel to those who don’t deserve it. To this day I still don’t know what they were fighting about. But I do know this: Reality is not what many adults make it seem. Most of you know about Columbine High School and the Aurora Theater Massacre, even the more recent ones such as the Sandy Hooke Elementary School shooting. It’s time for America to wake up and recognize the world that we live in. The violent, cruel, unforgiving, blood soaked country we pledge our allegiance to is not the perfect country. It’s time for the people of America to take the first steps into reality.