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Karla Flores ass 09

I have felt like an outsider most of my teenage years. Coming from a different country right before I became a teenager, I just did not seem to fit in with the rest of the kids. I wasn’t able to speak the language which made it a bit worse too. Kids in America just seemed to act different from the kids I was used to being around in my country. People didn’t used to laugh at you because you weren’t able to do something the way they did or because you weren’t able to act the way they did. I used to get bullied because I just wasn’t like the rest of them, but moving forward I don’t directly get bullied but I still feel like I don’t belong in certain places. The way I see people my age acting seems to be what everyone thinks is cool and what everyone wants to follow. But I don’t do as much as these kids do, I don’t party or drink or smoke or anything like that but that’s what most people my age seem to be doing now. Collings discuses how these experiences teach of the main reason why we feel like outsiders. She discusses how oppression utilizes these opportunities to make certain groups feel like less. I agree with her completely, because when people feel like this they will do anything to try to fit in or even lose their identity in the process. When we lose our identities we could easily be fooled to take on a fake one, where we could be completely controlled by the oppressor. So like she said, it is  important to keep a sense of our identity and culture as a way to remind ourselves who we really are. We give ourselves value, no matter the way others make us feel.