Caroline N, 20

Caroline N, 20

As a young black woman, I continue to face and experience racial prejudice. These encounters may not necessarily be people directly saying something racist to me but you start to feel it when someone gives you the look when you walk into a store, or a white woman will ask you the price of something in a store because they immediately assume that you work there. Mainly because she has the mentality that "most black people work in retail". Racism does not only refer to the physical oppression or labelling but overtime it affects how we think of society and ourselves. Systemic racism has laid a foundation for black people or people of colour to struggle to break the cycles of poverty, the cycles of not feeling worth it and it has become a sad reality that we are encouraged to go to school but once we get that diploma or degree, we are still stuck because of this Foundation. Now we face the real world, employers immediately disregarding your qualifications because of your race or they hire you, not because of your qualifications but because the company needs to put on a face that they hire people of colour as well. Until we dismantle the old Foundation and lay a new one we will continue fighting the surface only and not the root of the problem.