J.W. Gregory

No one really likes to talk about racism so generally people don’t. I never did. When I attended the University of Washington, Seattle I found that there were classes on racism and I was amazed. I was brought up in a tolerant area and never dreamed that there was a racism problem in contemporary America. Two quarters into school I found my passion and started down my road to fighting racism. I figured that if I were to fight it I should try to learn as much as I could and I began to read and write papers. I didn’t really understand that researching and working with the subject would be so challenging. When I was in graduate school I was putting together a presentation about institutionalized racism and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. I had a student government meeting and collapsed my computer screen but didn’t lock it. A fellow student went to my computer and opened the screen only to see a photograph of a KKK picnic. Not 30 minutes later I was feeling the ramifications of the situation. I can’t go into the particulars but studying racism isn’t easy. The good thing is that I am making it really easy for you to read about racism in America so that you can increase your awareness of the reality of what Americans face in today’s society.J.W. Gregory is a long-term researcher on matters regarding racism in America and attended the University of Washington, Seattle and Tacoma.