Massapequa- Samantha

"Hi, I am Samantha. I was born in Freeport, I lived there for the first three years of my life, my mother is from there, and my parents owned a business in Freeport. Even though I moved to Massapequa, both on the South Shore of Nassau County, I still very much grew up in Freeport, around my parents' restaurant and at my grandparents' house. We moved because my father wanted me and my brother to go to school in Massapequa because he believed they were better schools.

It is interesting because when I was young, I was always around people of different races in Freeport and I never thought about race much growing up, until high school. That was when I realized people were really racist in the town where I lived. It shows how racism really is taught. Unfortunately, racism was still very prevalent in the town where I went to school and lived, which was predominantly Italian and Jewish. I think I graduated with only one Black person in my class, maybe two, out of 600. Every town on Long Island really is separated by culture.

I feel very fortunate to have really grown up in Freeport,and played and grew up with people of all different races and cultures. We are more alike than we are different, but where we live really heightens those differences to make people feel like they are bigger than they actually are."

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