Journal 4-Italian, Mexican...whatever, same thing.

I can’t honestly say that I’ve had to deal with overbearing stereotyping before in my life. Growing up a white male, it doesn’t see too much racial profiling. If I had to say something I was stereotyped with, it would be that all kids that go to Catholic school are rich and stuck-up. When I would meet friends of friends from other high schools in Orlando, they’d usually be like, “Oh, you go to Bishop Moore, so you’re loaded and a spoiled brat.” Not the case at all. Just because I went to Catholic school growing up doesn’t mean I have some kind of superiority complex above every other person I meet. My parents wanted me to go to Catholic school because they felt that it would be better than what they had when they were kids. Not to say that every kid that comes out of Catholic school isn’t a total snob, because there’s plenty of them. I definitely understand that a lot of kids to come out of my high school were basically intolerable. As far as how I dealt with it, it was pretty simple. I try to be pretty modest by nature so most people could figure out I was just as normal as they were.

Another stereotype I’ve had to deal with is also pretty trivial in comparison to some others. Back in my freshman year, a pretty good friend of mine used to mock the abnormal amount of facial hair I had for a kid my age. Italian guys usually start getting facial hair at about age 13 so it was nothing new to me. My friend wasn’t very ‘culturally diverse’ then and isn’t now either, and he would constantly ask me how my lawn service was going. He insisted that my mustache at such a young age could only make me of Hispanic descent. Not only was that offensive to me as someone who’s 100% Italian, it’s also racist to those of Hispanic descent. I made it clear to him that I wouldn’t put up with his consistently offensive joke and that it had to stop. It did thankfully and we were good friends all throughout high school.