When we are born, we carry a huge cloud over our head. It stays with us our entire life until death, we all know it as socialization. Socialization is a term used by sociologist to refer to the lifelong process whereby people are made aware of the behavior that others expect of them as regards the norms, values, and culture of their society. In this paper I will talk about how my life has been affected due to socialization by my gender, race, religion and social class. I will also relate my personal experience to sociological research. As a child my life was very difficult. I was born to a young African They were part of a social Hierarchies my mother and I could never belong to because of the color of our skin and our socioeconomic status. I learned early on that my skin color will create a lot of hurdles for me throughout my life, but the values my father taught me early on making me equipped to handle any challenges that life had to offer. I decided that I wasn’t going to let the color of my skin or people’s prejudgments about me dictate how I live my life. I figure I would show people by my actions, not my words that there stereotypes about me were wrong. I remember the first time I was invited to a friend’s birthday party. She was my first white friend and this was her parent’s first time meeting me. When I walked in the door it felt like everyone in the room got quiet and look at me like I was in the wrong house. I didn’t let that discourage me, I greeted everyone with a big hello and a warm smile. I was determined to change her family’s views on what they thought of African American people, and I did just that. I was polite and respectful to everyone there even when they were rude to me. My father taught me that there are two ways to deal with racism, an easy way and a hard way. The easy way was for me to get angry and start yelling and screaming at them. By doing that I would be confirming their stereotypes about me, which was that I was Ghetto, and uneducated, violent, and
