Liz's Lens Excerpt

As I got older, life got more complicated. In a sentence, life got more real. The rose colored lenses of innocence began to take on a darker hue. As a child, the fact that I was a White, female, Baptist, middle to upper class individual honestly never occurred to me as important, defining, advantageous, or limiting in any way. My parents never placed great emphasis on these traits, so, therefore, neither did I. It was not until much later that I began to fell gender, social, and religious expectations in conjunction with these attributes. I was sheltered, not in the sense that my parents only let me play with other little replicas of myself, but instead because they encouraged me to do the opposite. They taught me that everyone was equal—sex, race, religion, status—all insignificant idiosyncrasies. Life began to teach me otherwise. It was not until I experienced and witnessed injustices on the basis of differences that I really started to develop or even become aware of distinguishing factors that influence my perspective uniquely.

Responses:

• Re: Liz's Lens Excerpt Joanna (4/19/03 1:05 AM)
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