Blake Barlow, age 18, Easton, GA, May 24, 2002 Robin Bowman

I’m from Georgia, so I’ve suffered from reverse discrimination, you know the black people “cracker this” or “cracker that”… “white cracker”, “white boy” or “whitey”… it’s just funny; I think it’s funny as hell… Words don’t really bother me. People don’t know you, how are they gonna say something about you? I see people, there’re a lot of rednecks where I live who are like, “nigga” this, “nigga” that, and I’m like, “Man, shut the fuck up!” and they say, “What you gonna do about it?” and we start getting into it. I’m just like, whatever. I think its stupid, just ignorant people. I’m sure I’ve discriminated against someone on one or two occasions (laughs)… I wouldn’t put it past me! My dad was in the Navy for twenty-three years…he had fun, so I figured I’d try it out and see if it lasted… On 9/11 I was on my ship (U.S.S. Iwo Jima) in Norfolk, VA A guy called up and he said, “They just bombed the two World Trade Centers and the White House.” We were like, “Oh my God,” and we ran to turn on the radio. Since then it makes you more aware of who you talk to and what you do… not more fearful, just more cautious. It worries me every time we have watches… You see a boat come by you don’t know if it’s coming towards the ship or just cruising by. Any minute, you know, we could be sent over there, to Afghanistan, to Iraq. I wish I would’ve joined the Marines so I could go down there and shoot at people… I’d rather do the ground action. I’m hoping to get a special assignment to go do something. I don’t look at other ethnic groups differently since 9/11. I think all of them are the same. Everyone stereotypes people even if they think they don’t, yes, everybody does. It’s just how far they go with it.