My first experiences with racism when I was around the age of 10 years old. I was in grade 5 as I was attending a basketball camp in Saskatoon, trying to become a good basketball player. When I got to the camp I knew nobody there, and quite frankly there was a bunch of different age groups and ethnic groups represented within the camp. Thinking about my experience there was more African American and different cultures represented there then there was of my own. I remember being scared because I didn’t know anybody but I was always a friendly person and to me in didn’t matter what language you spoke in or what colour your skin was I went and immediately started making friends. The camp was going great until I started to see a bit of racism being shown, being so young I had no idea why this was happening but they started to split the kids into groups of racial colour. So the white kids were put in a group and then the other skin coloured groups were put into groups. Reflecting back on it, it’s truly amazing to see how racism is still represented in our world. On top of that the white kids were helped out more with their skills being helped by white instructors while the other ethnic group kids were barely helped out and weren’t reviewing the same treatment and were taught by one African American coach.
It is truly astonishing to see that only at the age of 10,11,12 years old we were already being influenced by racism. I never got to see those friends I made with the other racial grouped kids for the rest of the camp because we were always put in a new group and I had no idea why. I remember going back to my uncles house with my dad and asking him “why did all the different skin colour people get put in different groups?” My dads response I will never forget for the rest of my life, my dad responded back with “son there’s a thing called racism where skin coloured people aren’t treated the same as us and it is horrific, especially in a 11 year old basketball camp.” I remember at my uncles researching what racism was and being in disbelief on how it has effected the world and how it is changing kids lives when they are just born till the day they die.
Racism is a terrible aspect of the world and I think racism is one of those things that takes everyone in order to stop it, nobody being bystanders or too scared to make a change everyone has to come together in order to stop racism and it is unfair to be judged on the colour of your skin because nobody can control that. Since I was 11 years old I have been against racism as to this day I’m still in disbelief it was represented at my basketball camp.
Hi Nolan, I really liked your story and thought this was an interesting everyday example of how racism is present in our world. As I read I wondered what it would be like to be in your shoes. By grade 5 kids can be very observant to what is going on around them and the grouping of different people would be something that a kid could easily pick up on. Throughout the story I noticed that there was some missing punctuation such as commas to split up some of those longer sentences. Also there were no capital letters at the start of the sentences when you were quoting. Overall I really enjoyed your story and was able to connect to it as I have grown up playing sports and have seen incidents of racism during that time. As a kid, I didn’t see the big deal about race either. I only saw the other kid as another kid and skin colour didn’t matter.