From Palestine to Blaagardsplads

when i first started teaching many moons ago - i was immediately blown away by the kids that i met. if i only had to deal with them: i'd still be teaching. today i found something written by one of my former students.  he's a young adult now but at the time he must have been in the 6th or 7th grade. when you read this, you will get an idea of how similar the experiences are between immigrants here in denmark and people of color in the u.s. 

From Palestine to Blågårdsplads

I’m a Palestinian boy living in Denmark, in a tough neighborhood called Blågårdsplads. People who live in my neighborhood are people with a minority background, like me. Many of the young boys in my neighborhood use most of their time on the streets, hanging out in groups and trying to find ways to make easy money. Now I’m wondering about, is it their own fault that they have chosen to take this path, or is it society's fault? When I talk about society, I’m not only talking about school life or the neighborhood. The government plays a big role when it comes to problems with people with minority background, especially the police and the media.

Three days ago I was hanging out with some friends; we were taking a walk in our neighborhood. When suddenly we were surrounded by the police, they took out the dogs so nobody could run away, as if we even thought about doing that. We were pushed up against the wall in a line, and then they started taking one person after the other to go through our pockets and see if we had something illegal on us. They took our names then said that we weren’t the ones they were looking for. These things have happened so many times, that it’s getting normal to get treated like that. Now how can boys with minority backgrounds not get filled up with hate, when they are constantly looked down at by the police and also some of the Danish people? Most of the newspapers make it even worse by describing them as people with minority background, and now they use a word that doesn’t even make sense to describe children of parents with minority background. In some of the Danish newspapers, they would call the children as second generation of immigrants and third generation of immigrants etc. Even if they are born here in Denmark and have Danish citizenship they are still not seen as Danish, so how do you want the children to see themselves as Danish?