" Failures are divided into two classes - those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought." -John Charles Salak





Thursday, May 22, 2008

Fruitvale Village


Today we went down to Fruitvale Village in Oakland to interview people, just like we did on Tuesday but at Walnut Creek. At first, I thought that interviewing people at Fruitvale would be easier than my experiences at Walnut Creek. When we were in Walnut Creek I felt like nobody wanted to get interviewed because they didn’t really care, or they were just being rude to us for being minorities. I thought that at Fruitvale it would be easier because people here look like us and what not, but I was wrong. When we went to interview people in Fruitvale we were still getting rejected. I realized that when we were in Walnut Creek, we were not being rejected because of the fact that we are minorities. Everyone has there own reasons. For me, it was harder to interview people simply because I had difficulties translating English to Spanish correctly.

Although I have lived in this area for my whole life, I finally noticed something. I saw that my definition of diversity was incorrect and it changed. Before, I felt like diversity meant that there were no white people. In other words, if there were no Caucasians around than I would feel like it was very diverse. After coming from Walnut Creek and then going to Fruitvale, I realized that my community is not as diverse as I thought. There were very few Caucasians in my community, the majority was Latino, followed by African Americans, and the rest were rarely seen.

The positive aspects that I saw on Fruitvale was that although not everyone wanted to be interviewed, people here were nicer to us, and it was a little bit more comfortable. Also, there are many more minorities in comparison to how Walnut Creek is, but still Fruitvale could be more equally diverse. Some of the negative aspects of Fruitvale is that people are frightened to be in that area in late afternoon. It is also not the cleanest area.

Overall, I learned that my very own definition of diversity changed after interviewing people at Fruitvale Village.

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