Coming from a place the total opposite of where we are sitting now, in Maine. A mainly white populated place, with very little people of color. Compared to South Jersey in my area there are hardly any white people, I won’t lie I was nervous. Coming from where if you see a white person walking the street where I stood you wonder, “That guy is lost”. I thought I would come to the University of New England be one of those guys. I thought I would stick out like a sore thumb.  

To my realization, I am not that guy. This area is most definitely considered to be a “white space”, but I feel no different. Yes, to my naked eye I don’t see people whom I can physically resemble myself to but what I can’t see with my naked eye is the people here are very welcoming. Most of the people whom I have been surrounded by over the course of my first year in college, don’t even see me different from anyone else. So, I feel as if there will not be any really huge racial road blocks in the way of the movement.  

I don’t think it should take too much to start an “anti-racial” movement here at UNE. I feel me personally has some big connections. I feel like I can make this happen quicker than a normal UNE student. I have a handful of powerful strong ties I can choose from to start this movement here. I have a huge group of football guys that I know would help me 100% start this movement and get it going. I also have a good relationship with the president himself, along with the social media department and the people who run all the social media accounts and handles the post cards and acceptance letters. I also have a big group of very good friends that would be more than happy to help me on my endeavors in starting this movement.  

There are many social habits that may become a distraction to the momentum of my movement. I feel like one of the biggest social habit that I will run into is the simple fact that people nowadays make it hard to talk about race if you are the opposite color of the person you are talking to. Society makes it seem like a white person can’t talk to a black person about race or racism. Which is something that I feel is completely wrong. Everyone should be able to have a say in the topic of race; it is and has been happening on our US turf for years on end. At this point it is everyone’s problem.  

I feel like if that simple social habit were to be minimized into an understanding with whoever is a part of the movement things would be able to move quicker and way more smoothly. I would personally make multiple statements about how it is more than okay to talk to a person opposite of color about the topic of race. After that problem is minimized there will of course be outside sources looking in and they will have their own words to say. But that’s just what comes with attempting to start a movement. Especially a movement of this sort.  

This is a very powerful movement I am trying to start here, and I understand that. This comes with plenty road blocks and negative things can be said and misinterpreted, there is a lot of pressure that comes with the movement. But we are humans and we are built to fight through the pressure.  And once that happens, there will be change and it will be big.