Racism s Impact On Our Society - 1625 Words

Racism’s Impact on Our Society In Kiese Laymon’s â€Å"My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK†, he cites many examples of pieces of racism that he witnessed in Poughkeepsie, New York, a small town in New York on the Hudson River. This town is the last place where the stereotypes suggest racism lives, a wealthy small town in the northeast United States. Kiese Laymon looks at the experiences of black and brown people in America to highlight the effects of racism in their everyday lives. While Kiese Laymon is showing us that throughout his life he has experienced discrimination and racial profiling, these terrible experiences have helped him develop extraordinarily strong bonds with others who experience the same thing. Throughout this†¦show more content†¦Laymon also experiences racism in his own life as a professor who is treated quite poorly by his co-workers. Laymon is asked for his ID by security guards because they don’t believe that he works there and is talked down to b y professors and deans at Vassar College. Laymon writes, â€Å"I left that meeting knowing that there are few things more shameful than being treated like a nigger by †¦ intellectually and imaginatively average white Americans who are not, and will never have to be, half as good at their jobs as you are at yours† (Laymon, â€Å"My Vassar College ID Makes Everything OK†). This quote makes the reader critically evaluate those who are extremely successful and whether they could be as successful as they are if they were put in the disadvantageous position that Laymon is in. Laymon’s arguments cause his readers to think about their lives and how differently they could be if they were just born a different color. Not only does he divulge into his and other’s life experiences with racism, but he also looks at the instances where he intervened in this issues. Laymon comes to the defense of his wrongly accused and arrested students because he understands the terrible feeling that is accompanied by being racially profiled. Laymon writes, â€Å"Vassar College, ... a place so committed to access and what they call economic diversity, did its part to ensure that a black Poughkeepsie child, charged