Who is Elizabeth Schock?
Elizabeth Schock was born and raised by a single mom in South Florida. She grew up in Boca Raton in the 70s about a half mile from the beach. The area is densely populated and extremely diverse. She moved to Colorado in her thirties and works in the field of geographic information systems (GIS). Her family moved to Cheyenne about two years ago. She is an atheist and is ethnically Italian, Greek and Austrian. According to her, her friends would describe her as easygoing, nonjudgmental, too kind, and a foot bag aficionado.
Excerpt from interview with Elizabeth Schock by Whitney Dow, 2018
Q1: But, I guess, what I mean, if you walked out this door and one door you went through, you emerged as you are, another door, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that you would emerge as the black you. Would you consciously choose one or the other doors, or would it not matter to you?
Schock: [01:24:46] Consciously, I wish it wouldn’t matter, but I would not want to deal with the discrimination that black people must go through—they probably go through. So no. If I was given a choice to change my color right now, I would choose to stay white. That’s horrible to say, but that’s the world we live in today is folks who are black get subjected—and folks who are Hispanic, they get subjected to discriminations.
My sister’s boyfriend is black, and he makes way more than me. I always go to him for business advice. But he admitted last week when I spoke with him that if he gets pulled over, what you do is you keep your hands on the wheel, you stare straight ahead, and you’re very polite. This man makes six figures. He’s in charge of a large company, [laughs] and he has to worry about that. It’s not just the poor blacks. It’s every black person. You have to worry about that. And I think if somebody said, “Hey, you want to change your color,” I would be like, “No, I don’t want to worry about that.”
Interview Transcript
Participant-Submitted Photos
