Monday, January 30, 2012

The Saint John's Mentality

It seems the people I went to grade school with continue to hold their prejudices against me. Ten years ago, I transferred to a new grade school called Saint John of the Cross. Right off the bat, my peers were noticeably more snobby than my former, [seemingly] lower-income classmates of the year before. I had never experienced such an uphill battle with meeting friends before. The girls were stuck up, the boys had already formed their impenetrable groups, and there was no way of reconciling either without completely conforming. I was reluctant to do so.

Yet I believe to this day, even if I had attempted to alter my interests to theirs, I never would have received full acceptance. Partly because of my name (it was not Irish, and nor was I), where I lived (which was not in the tiny, encapsulated village of ignorance known as Western Springs), I did not have any older siblings, and I was shy and unfunny. So unsurprisingly, my experience was rocky. Although this flies in the face of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X's pursuits of yesteryear, ethnic discrimination is alive and not well publicized.

I may have never been approached with open arms because I transferred in, and the same goes for my high school experience.

My point then is, incredibly people that attended Saint John of the Cross with me behave just as stiffly as they did over ten years ago. Back then, they would never invite me to their houses, now they never spark up conversation that is more than slightly meaningful in any real way, or invited me to any parties. They are the same, overly privileged suburbanite elite that will ever let more than a few into their highly exclusive social circles.

I'm about to say "screw you" to any reunion with Saint John of the Cross.

1 comment:

ItsObviouslyPatrick said...

Yeah ostracizing non-irish kids was the school pastime back at SJC. Not. And Malcolm X didn't care about stopping ethnic discrimination, he acknowledged it as a reality and tried to advocate that the black community separate itself from the white community and become self sufficient.