Sammy was a big soccer fan. Star soccer player in high school, at Dixie on a full athletic scholarship. Me and my brother *Jeff became friends with Sammy pretty quickly. He was funny, fun to hang around with, and just a good friend to both of us. Another guy who lived with me, *James, was a white guy also from Tooele, whom I knew in high school, but it's not like he was a friend of mine throughout high school. Maybe a "Sup?" and head nod occasionally, but to me he was just a background character in the chapter of my life known as high school. Soon after we moved in me, Jeff, Sammy and James always hung out together. We watched the NCAA basketball tournament together, and Jeff was especially excited this year because the Wyoming Cowboys had made it to the tournament after an unexpected win over San Diego State in the Mountain West Conference title game. We watched the drama unfold live on TV, and cheered with each other, laughed with each other, and became good friends. Even though the perceptual process might of allowed me to judge Sammy a little to quickly based on race, I was starting to believe he could be a really good friend.
Now I could stop here and say, this is it. I judged Sammy to early and stereotyped the shit out of him based on race. I'm an awful person. No, no, no I am not racist. I got to know Sammy and became friends with him. And as I got to know him a bit better I realized that maybe my perceptual process going on in my mind had forced me to be a little bit to trusting of Sammy right away, based on a few reasons. 1. We were from the same small town. 2. We shared common interests (i.e. sports) and 3. His best friend James was a high school acquaintance of mine. I trusted him too soon. Once Sammy showed his true colors things got ugly.
It started off with simple stuff. Sammy and James were in the room next to me and Jeff's. Some nights I would watch TV or play video games, and the sound apparently annoyed Sammy, who made a point of knocking on the wall and saying "Quiet down!" I was happy to oblige, after all, I'm pretty easy going and very respectful of others.
Over time it got worse. One night I was really tired and couldn't sleep, and I needed to be up for work early the next morning and James and Sammy were playing videos games loudly. The wall separating our two rooms is paper thin. Noise travels though easily. I knocked on the wall. Sammy's bed is right up against the wall, and he knocked back, as if to mock me.
I went over to the room and asked if they could please turn down the volume. James muttered "Dude, it's not even that loud, chill out," but ultimately agreed to turn it down. I thanked him and as I turned to leave, Sammy pipes up "Dude, you need to chill the f--- out. No one likes you. Jeff doesn't even like you. You are dirty, unkempt, and annoying."
Startled, I asked "What?"
Sammy repeated it.
"Maybe you're the one who's dirty and annoying," I fired back. "Look at this room dude. Food all over the place, dirty clothes on the ground. Shut the f--- up Sammy." At which point Sammy closed the door.
The next day we talked almost as if the events the previous night never happened, as if they were some long forgotten squabble between friends. We watched SportsCenter together, talked about various topics, and ignored the thing in the back of both of our minds. We both knew it, but shit was about to hit the fan at some point. We acted like friends to avoid the inevitability of something big happening. We tried to brush it aside, put it out of our minds.
A few weeks later, Sammy comes storming into my room.
"Where is my cable cord that I let you borrow?" he asked loudly and angrily.
"Uh what? You never let me borrow a cable cord. The one I have is mine. You never gave me anything."
"Bullshit. Give it to me," Sammy once again demanded.
"I told you I don't have it." I replied in an angry tone through gritted teeth.
"Okay, you're starting to piss me off," Sammy said.
"Good, cause you're pissing me off too," I shot back. "Get the f--- out of my room, Sammy or I'm calling the apartment managers on your ass."
Sammy stormed out, and as he left he called me every name in the book, cussing up a storm. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of apple juice, nature's nectar. As I was walking into the living room, I hear a voice behind me. "I want my cable cord, asshole."
I spun around to face Sammy. "You're really making me mad now," I snarled.
"Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about it?" he replied sarcastically.
I turned around and walked away. It's not worth it, I thought to myself.
I felt a strong push into my back. The apple juice went everywhere as I hit the floor hard.
I got up and held him against the wall. He pushed back. No punches were thrown. He turned around and walked away as I still had him by the shirt. He broke free and went into his room and locked the door. I sat outside taunting him. I wanted a fight. I wanted a dance partner. But he declined the invitation. He stayed inside his room, and wouldn't come out no matter what I said, or how personal my insults and taunts were.
I sure as hell wasn't cleaning up the kitchen. The mess sat there for days. Jeff and James were getting slightly annoyed that no one was cleaning it up. Every time Sammy walked by, or I saw him around the house, I yelled insults and told him to get on his knees and scrub the floor clean. I was downright mean. I felt angry towards him. He was and is a cancer that needs to be removed. I was doing everything I could to get him to leave. Nothing worked, no matter what I said. He would yell insults back, we would yell obscenities at each other, but ultimately neither one of us was the bigger person. We got in each other's face, and James and Jeff often times had to separate me and Sammy.
One day, I was watching the Stanley Cup playoffs (that's hockey for those of you who don't know) in the living room. I had to go run an errand, and I let everyone know that I called the TV when I got back. When I came back and walked through those doors, my blood boiled. Sammy was sitting there, watching soccer. I told him in a surprisingly calm voice "I called the TV, I'm changing it back now."
"Don't you dare touch that f------ TV," Sammy said through gritted teeth as he rose out of his chair. He pointed a finger. "Don't you dare."
I changed the channel.
A fist flew in from my blind side and hit me in the mouth. Blood immediately began pouring out of my lip and running down my chin onto my shirt. I swung at him. Missed. He hit me in the side of the head. I connected right above his eye. He connected several times at my head. I got him in the nose. Blood began pouring out of his nose. We exchanged blows for a few minutes. Jeff walked in, didn't even try and stop it, he just left the room.
For whatever reason, Sammy turned around and left. I called the police and reported an assault. He had hit me first, it was self defense. It took the cops a while to work things out. Sammy tried to lie and say that I had hit him first. The cops could tell he was lying. He spent a night in jail as I spent the night in my soft warm bed. I was laughing inside. He had got what he deserved, I thought. And I got away scot free, I gloated to myself.
I was honestly going to press charges. But the apartment manager took Sammy's side of the story. The apartment manger and all of the employees who work there are all friends with Sammy. They told me I have two choices. 1. Drop the assault charge against Sammy and move out of the apartment and into another apartment within the same complex, or 2. Pursue the assault charge and be kicked out, thus making me homeless. They were all friends of Sammy, and they had his back. They now hate me, and I realized that.
I chose option number 1. The apartment manager who was in charge told me I had a choice of moving into C2, or C4. I was planning ongoing to both and checking both of them out to see which one I liked better. I went to C2 first. Guys seemed pretty chill, but unfortunately they had all of their stuff spread out, and there wasn't really an empty room available. So I decided to try my luck with C4. I knocked on the door, it opened, and there stood a black man. A very tall black man. That perceptual process happened. Oh no. Is this going to be a repeat of what happened with Sammy? Can I trust him? And I am ashamed to admit that those thoughts crossed my brain.
I want to make something very, very, very clear. I am NOT racist by any stretch of the imagination. This perceptual process, especially dealing with race, is common for everyone. Hell, I've already seen a few posts admitting to unfairly stereotyping someone based on race. I applaud those who have the courage to admit it, including myself.
He introduced himself as *David. He then pulled me to the side and broke down into tears. He wasn't even supposed to be living here. He was homeless, and staying with friends until he could work something out. He was living in the room that I was supposed to be moving into. The managers did not know that he was there. Despite my own perceptual process that resulted in me unfairly judging him, my compassionate side won over. I went back to the managers and asked if we could work something out and have me move into C2 instead of C4. David pulled me into a hug. He began crying. "Thank you. Thank you so much." he kept saying.
Long story short, it didn't happen. The apartment managers came back and found David living there, and put all this stuff, including clothing, into a bag and put it in the closet in the apartment.I moved in. I felt awful. I explained to him that I did everything I could to find another place to live. David was very understanding.
David continued to live at our place. He slept on the couch, and if anyone of authority saw him walking out of the apartment, he told them he was just visiting.
David became annoying very fast. He was very paranoid and always locked the doors. He would be sitting on the couch watching TV in the middle of the day, and I would go take the trash out, and I would come back and the door would be locked. He would constantly barge into my room, as if it still belonged to him (despite the fact that it never did) and give me a sob story, trying to make me feel sympathetic towards him. He would sigh dramatically and them shake his head and say "I don't know what to do, man. I don't know what to do." He would come into my room and do this same thing every night, to the point that it became a nightly ritual I came to expect. A lot of the talks we had were fun and cool, but he always seemed to want to go back to his problems. He constantly brought them up. He was fishing for sympathy, and that annoyed me. I definitely don't think I'm alone. I think it would annoy just about anybody. Out of the kindness of my heart, I kept his shoes in my room, because they were the most valuable of his possessions. The way he explained it, he could replace everything else. But those shoes were somehow irreplaceable. I still don't understand this logic, but whatever. He had more than any girl I've ever seen. He had tons of basketball shoes. It got to be a nuisance, because I wanted my room to be clutter free. David was a really nice guy, just very clingy and annoying.
Eventually, when he was finally able to scrape up enough money to get a room, he became less clingy, less annoying, and actually an enjoyable person to talk to. We have not had any problems thus far, and I've known David for almost two months now.
As I write this, I can't help but wonder if I let myself get annoyed and bothered because of his race, because he is black. Perhaps I already had my guard up from dealing with the problems that me and Sammy had. My imagine Mr. Young raising his fists like he does to demonstrate how people sometimes have their guard up due to a flawed perceptual process. Me and David are now friends, and I no longer see or talk to Sammy.
The perceptual process can cause a lot of unnecessary drama if you aren't careful. My perceptual process caused me to ignore the person Sammy really was because I already had jumped to the evaluation part of the perceptual process thinking he was friendly and a safe guy to be around. It caused a lot of problems in the long run because I had not yet learned to slow my own perceptual process down. And hell, I still haven't. Please do not make the same mistake I did. Do not be too trusting. That's not to say have your guard up, but find a nice middle ground between having a guard up and blindly walking into dangerous and volatile situations.
The perceptual process also caused me to evaluate David unfairly and put him into the same category as Sammy, based only on the mere fact that they are both members of the same race. For the first little bit of me living there, I hid all my valuables for fear that David would steal something. And now I feel bad about doing that. If David was white I probably wouldn't hide anything, and wouldn't be so fearful. But now that I know David better, I know that he is a good guy who wouldn't harm a flea.
Whether you have the balls to admit it or not, everyone has made an assumption based on race. Once again, I applaud those who had the courage to admit that they do in fact make unfair evaluations based on race. You aren't a racist if you admit that. You are a victim of the perceptual process working in harmful ways. The people who can admit that they do make assumptions and evaluations based on race are the ones who are the closest to mastering the skill of slowing down the perceptual process and using it to your advantage.
For those of you who read this entire post, thank you. I know it is very long, but I worked hard on this and used my notes to type this and incorporate some lessons we've learned from class into my story. Thanks y'all for reading. Keep improving.
*Names changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
-Brayden Dobson
I want to make something very, very, very clear. I am NOT racist by any stretch of the imagination. This perceptual process, especially dealing with race, is common for everyone. Hell, I've already seen a few posts admitting to unfairly stereotyping someone based on race. I applaud those who have the courage to admit it, including myself.
He introduced himself as *David. He then pulled me to the side and broke down into tears. He wasn't even supposed to be living here. He was homeless, and staying with friends until he could work something out. He was living in the room that I was supposed to be moving into. The managers did not know that he was there. Despite my own perceptual process that resulted in me unfairly judging him, my compassionate side won over. I went back to the managers and asked if we could work something out and have me move into C2 instead of C4. David pulled me into a hug. He began crying. "Thank you. Thank you so much." he kept saying.
Long story short, it didn't happen. The apartment managers came back and found David living there, and put all this stuff, including clothing, into a bag and put it in the closet in the apartment.I moved in. I felt awful. I explained to him that I did everything I could to find another place to live. David was very understanding.
David continued to live at our place. He slept on the couch, and if anyone of authority saw him walking out of the apartment, he told them he was just visiting.
David became annoying very fast. He was very paranoid and always locked the doors. He would be sitting on the couch watching TV in the middle of the day, and I would go take the trash out, and I would come back and the door would be locked. He would constantly barge into my room, as if it still belonged to him (despite the fact that it never did) and give me a sob story, trying to make me feel sympathetic towards him. He would sigh dramatically and them shake his head and say "I don't know what to do, man. I don't know what to do." He would come into my room and do this same thing every night, to the point that it became a nightly ritual I came to expect. A lot of the talks we had were fun and cool, but he always seemed to want to go back to his problems. He constantly brought them up. He was fishing for sympathy, and that annoyed me. I definitely don't think I'm alone. I think it would annoy just about anybody. Out of the kindness of my heart, I kept his shoes in my room, because they were the most valuable of his possessions. The way he explained it, he could replace everything else. But those shoes were somehow irreplaceable. I still don't understand this logic, but whatever. He had more than any girl I've ever seen. He had tons of basketball shoes. It got to be a nuisance, because I wanted my room to be clutter free. David was a really nice guy, just very clingy and annoying.
Eventually, when he was finally able to scrape up enough money to get a room, he became less clingy, less annoying, and actually an enjoyable person to talk to. We have not had any problems thus far, and I've known David for almost two months now.
As I write this, I can't help but wonder if I let myself get annoyed and bothered because of his race, because he is black. Perhaps I already had my guard up from dealing with the problems that me and Sammy had. My imagine Mr. Young raising his fists like he does to demonstrate how people sometimes have their guard up due to a flawed perceptual process. Me and David are now friends, and I no longer see or talk to Sammy.
The perceptual process can cause a lot of unnecessary drama if you aren't careful. My perceptual process caused me to ignore the person Sammy really was because I already had jumped to the evaluation part of the perceptual process thinking he was friendly and a safe guy to be around. It caused a lot of problems in the long run because I had not yet learned to slow my own perceptual process down. And hell, I still haven't. Please do not make the same mistake I did. Do not be too trusting. That's not to say have your guard up, but find a nice middle ground between having a guard up and blindly walking into dangerous and volatile situations.
The perceptual process also caused me to evaluate David unfairly and put him into the same category as Sammy, based only on the mere fact that they are both members of the same race. For the first little bit of me living there, I hid all my valuables for fear that David would steal something. And now I feel bad about doing that. If David was white I probably wouldn't hide anything, and wouldn't be so fearful. But now that I know David better, I know that he is a good guy who wouldn't harm a flea.
Whether you have the balls to admit it or not, everyone has made an assumption based on race. Once again, I applaud those who had the courage to admit that they do in fact make unfair evaluations based on race. You aren't a racist if you admit that. You are a victim of the perceptual process working in harmful ways. The people who can admit that they do make assumptions and evaluations based on race are the ones who are the closest to mastering the skill of slowing down the perceptual process and using it to your advantage.
For those of you who read this entire post, thank you. I know it is very long, but I worked hard on this and used my notes to type this and incorporate some lessons we've learned from class into my story. Thanks y'all for reading. Keep improving.
*Names changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
-Brayden Dobson
