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10-27-08, 10:04 AM
This is a concept that I have been thinking about for a long time going now. The question that I'm about to pose may sound very vague; I apologize if it is.
What are people's thoughts on conformity?
All of my life, I have been the different one. I never tried to do it on purpose; it just worked out that way. When I was younger, while everyone would be playing around outside, I was reading (newspapers, out of all things). I always dressed differently than everyone in my family, thought differently, and acted differently. Unlike all of my (male) cousins, uncles or most Dominican men, I was never an avid girl-chaser, nor do I desire to be one.
This was noticeable even in school. From a racial standpoint, I couldn't even really be considered the "token black guy" in any group that I was in (which were few, and far between). I was (and still am) in a gap where I couldn't identify with my own people because I was out of the loop (kind of hard to describe), and couldn't identify with other nationalities because I wasn't one of them.
I've come to grips about this a while ago, and I don't have any problems with it anymore. It just strikes me that a lot of the activities that I've chosen over the years were ones that had very few African-Americans or Latinos involved in them (cycling included), and that I could never identify myself with groups that I was a member of that did have either nationality as a majority.
What are people's thoughts on conformity?
All of my life, I have been the different one. I never tried to do it on purpose; it just worked out that way. When I was younger, while everyone would be playing around outside, I was reading (newspapers, out of all things). I always dressed differently than everyone in my family, thought differently, and acted differently. Unlike all of my (male) cousins, uncles or most Dominican men, I was never an avid girl-chaser, nor do I desire to be one.
This was noticeable even in school. From a racial standpoint, I couldn't even really be considered the "token black guy" in any group that I was in (which were few, and far between). I was (and still am) in a gap where I couldn't identify with my own people because I was out of the loop (kind of hard to describe), and couldn't identify with other nationalities because I wasn't one of them.
I've come to grips about this a while ago, and I don't have any problems with it anymore. It just strikes me that a lot of the activities that I've chosen over the years were ones that had very few African-Americans or Latinos involved in them (cycling included), and that I could never identify myself with groups that I was a member of that did have either nationality as a majority.