Go Your Own Way

                While others might say the fates are against them, I disagree; I think they provide a challenge.  There is a special challenge behind each disadvantage, each obstacle, each deterrent, each racial slur, each stereotype, each little thing that can frustrate us.  Racial profiling has been a difficult thing to overcome.  Not only is it perpetuated by those who believe the stereotypes, but by those who live up to them.  And those who live up to stereotypes make the lives for those who don’t more difficult.  Those people who choose to live differently have to face the challenge of being profiled for how they look.  Jeannette Walls was dirt poor, white, and scarred by fire.  Somehow, though, she took on that challenge and overcame the expectations.  Her family was jealous.  Jimi Hendrix spoke to the masses, spreading his rock and roll message across the United States and even beyond.  He was black.  In fact, most early rock and rollers were black, but they created a sound that even white people had to love.  Humans, as a race, accepted the world as a challenge.  From the earliest tools to our ever increasing endeavors into outer space, we’ve never let anything limit us.  The mentality of taking life as a challenge has led to success throughout the world, and it is that mentality that has the potential to break stereotypes.  It has been done by individuals before (including the all-powerful Morgan Freeman).  Brent Staples has been tested by profiling and will most likely be tested again, but he has stepped outside his race’s stereotypical lifestyle and chosen his own.  However impossible the odds, records, limits, stereotypes, and more can be broken.

                 “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” 

                -Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

P.S. The song today is "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac