Xavier Woods Gives Powerful Comments About His Family Preparing Him For Life

Xavier Woods was a guest on TwitchRivals to talk about the current unrest in America and some of his own personal experiences. In the clip below, Xavier spoke about how his family raised him, and growing up in a way to be able to survive against people who didn't like him, simply because he was African American.

"My dad told me when I was much younger ? when I was a tiny child ? he told me there was going to be people that don't like me purely because of the way that I look," Woods said. "Purely because of the color of my skin. And, unfortunately, there's not always a lot that you can do to change someone's mind about you. So he explained that to me, I didn't really understand, I didn't get it as a kid. Then, throughout my life he always made sure that I understood I had to work twice as hard as some people in order to get treated the same. In some situations, not even the same.

"When you do everything you possibly can, you educate yourself, you learn to be an athlete, you learn to play an instrument, you're in AP classes. You're doing everything you can and you're doing it because you want to because you want to learn these things. You want to understand these things, but then at its core ? I realized through conversation the other day ? because of the way things are, my entire life I've had to spend trying to figure out how to present myself as nonthreatening.

"If you haven't been in that situation or understood something like that ? it's a lot. It's a lot because even though someone might hate me, the onus is on me to deal with it. Not on them. There's no pressure on them to deal with their hate and their pain. While in my house, as a child, I had to have this talk, I had to get this talk, my parents had to give me this information. Not so I could be smarter, not so that I could do better, it's so I could stay alive. That was the first goal in our house. Survive amongst people who might not want you to survive."

You can watch his full appearance in the video above.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit UpUpDownDown and give a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.

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