The Minority Within the Majority

The Start All Over Again

It was Freshman year for James Stanley. Well at least for the third time in the span of 3 months. James moves around a lot with his family because they could barely stay within one house in one state without almost losing it. He moved from Pennsylvania, to Georgia, to Minnesota, now here he was in New York in the Brooklyn area where the majority of the African Americans live. He always felt like the minority ever since he moved and people giving him stares because he was a white kid in a predominantly black neighborhood. James grew up tough but never engages in violence and he likes to keep things peaceful with people, which explains why he doesn't get into fights. Some people tried giving him beef on his first day as Freshman, all because he was the new kid and because he was white, hearing from the other African Americans "you see that new cracker at school?" and other things. He didn't make any friends and he sat by himself at lunch even though he tried to sit and talk and make friends everyone denied him. James was upset, but he was used to it. There was always one thing though that got his spirits up: rap music. He listened daily to rappers such as Eminem and MGK, having them be his inspirations as they were the only big, white rappers he listened to.

James even rapped himself, sometimes even saying random rap lyrics called 'bars' out of nowhere when they'd come to the top of his head. He started when he was in 8th grade. He was doing it for fun while living in Minnesota and just did it around his friends over there; then he started to do it more frequently, even writing down lyrics and making his own raps. Only friends in Minnesota heard him, he's nervous about rapping in Brooklyn as he's nervous about the opinions of everyone else seeing a white boy rap. He started writing and said tomorrow he'll start seeing if anybody wants to hear him rap.