Growing up in Southern Colorado has done some interesting things to the way I think. I went to school with quite a few Mexican people, and so my mind started to assume that everyone that wasn't white was Mexican.
When I came up to CSU, I had to quickly rework the way I thought. This became apparent to me when I was making friends in the dorm building. There was a boy that was in our group of friends. He had dark skin and over time I found out that he spoke fluent Spanish. My mind automatically categorized him has Mexican. After talking to him it was brought to my attention that he is actually half white, half black.
I had grown up with the only ethnic groups being white and Mexican that I had an automatic activation that made me assume that everyone with darker skin than mine was Mexican. Automatic activation is something we are conditioned to think. A great example of automatic activation comes from Tim Wise's documentary "White Like Me." Tim Wise grew up going to a black school and is an equal rights activist. Despite having a diverse and open minded background, Wise explains in his film that he boarded a plane one day and noticed that the two pilots were black. His first thought was, "Are they qualified to do this?" From being exposed to the media and thoughts of the dominant group all his life, Wise's first thought was that the pilots were not capable of flying a plane just because of their race. Wise said that immediately after his first thought, his rational brain kicked in and remembered that in order to be a pilot one has to go through extensive training, and they would not have a job if they were unqualified for the position.
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