Sometimes, it takes a lot for a man to realize what's right in front of him. Seriously. My name is Adam Alters. I was born in the town of Blacksburg, Virginia, and I grew up all over the place. For half my life I lived in the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Nowadays, I find myself in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, of all places. When things didn't go too well during my first two semesters at Virginia Tech, I opted to study elsewhere. I'd only been to Canada a couple of times but I remembered Ontario fondly, especially the City of Toronto. I applied to the University of Toronto but when I couldn't get in, I applied to Carleton University in Ottawa instead. Little did I know that it was an experience which would change my life.
Cultural relativity is an interesting concept. You see, if I seem strange to you, you must remember that you must seem equally strange to me at the very least. In the City of Ottawa, I experienced a lot of culture shock. Black Canadians are nothing like African-Americans, man. In Ottawa I ran into South Africans, Congolese, Cameroonians, Afro-Brazilians, Jamaicans, Haitians, Ethiopians, Somalis and whatever folk from Djibouti call themselves. And they did NOT get along with each other. In America, different minority groups such as the Blacks, the Asians and the Hispanics have long realized that in America, there are really only two groups, the White folks and the rest of us. Minorities in America are united for the most part because they are all in the same shitty boat. Oh, the Asians sometimes like to put on airs, until some racist White guy reminds them that he doesn't consider them his equals. Then they remember they're minorities.
At least, that's how the world worked where I came from. The Mexicans, Chinese and Blacks aren't in love with each other but we try to get along because we all get treated like shit by the Powers That Be, who happen to be White. In America, at least. In Canada, it's another story. Different minority groups shoot down other minority groups and they're all pushing and shoving each other for scraps from the White folks table. I was deeply saddened when I realized this during my first week in the Confederation of Canada. I didn't want to pay an extremely high amount of cash to stay in the dormitories at Carleton University. Instead, I looked for a cheap apartment around the City of Ottawa. I found this two-bedroom apartment in the sector of Vanier, in the East End of Ottawa. A place inhabited mainly by Arabs, Somalis, and a few Hispanics and Asians. Vanier is affectionately known as Minority City in the Ottawa metro area. I thought I'd fit right in since it's a small town full of outsiders. Boy was I wrong!
As a six-foot-three, well-built African-American male, I was used to getting stared at pretty much everywhere I went. However, in Canada I got stared at by both Black folks and everybody else. This was a new thing for me. I took that in stride. I enrolled in the Criminology program at Carleton University. Since I'm an American citizen on a student visa, they're charging me international rates. The funny thing is that paying fifteen hundred dollars per class at Carleton University as an American student in a Canadian school still beats paying forty grand a year as a local student at Virginia Tech. Isn't it lovely how the price of higher education skyrocketed during the Recession? The plan was to get my bachelor's degree in Criminology from Carleton University and return to Virginia in time for the next training period of the Virginia State Police Academy. My father, Lionel Alters, is a retired Virginia State Police Trooper. With him backing me up and an advanced degree, I was a shoe-in. Or so I hoped.
