Family Origins

I interviewed my mother, and she told me that our ancestors originally came from Jackson, Mississippi. I was also told that they never relocated. Our family surname did not change during this time period. My preferred ethnic identification is African-American. I learned about my ethnicity from my parents and my grandmother on my mother’s side of the family. I learned about my ethnicity from my grandmother based on her experiences growing up in Jackson, Mississippi where she experienced treatments of racism because she was African-American. I learned about my ethnicity from my parents based on the foods that we ate and the music they listened to as I grew up. The most interesting part of the conversation with my mother was her explaining to me that my ancestral grandfather was an Irish-American and my ancestral grandmother was African-American. This was interesting because they had to experience discrimination being an interracial couple in a southern state during that time period.
About a year and a half ago, my friend Damien needed to get some ice cream out of his car so it would not melt. He asked me to go into seven-eleven to get him some cigarettes in order to save time. After he handed me the money, I was stopped by a police officer who asked me why Damien handed me money. The police officer explained that there had been a lot of robberies going on around the area. Even though I told him that I knew Damien from high school, I had to wait until Damien confirmed it. Then he asked for my ID and said “Are you broke?” I told him no and in the meantime, his partner went to ask Damien if he knew who I was. After that, the officer told me to have a good night. I felt as though this was discrimination because he saw my ID and knew that I was not old enough to buy alcohol for a minor, and his partner asked for Damien’s ID so he knew that Damien was old enough to buy cigarettes. As long as I was not committing a robbery, there was no need for the officer to ask about my financial status while waiting for his partner to confirm what I had already told him.