Week 6 Post 2

I would say what makes me the most angry is racial discrimination in general. Being mixed with Middle Eastern, Mexican, and European I see it within all of my blood. With my Middle Eastern family I constantly see and hear racist remarks towards my family. Whether they happen to be wearing a hijab, speaking Arabic, or reciting a prayer I constantly see concerned or scared looks thrown at these family members. An example of this is before every flight my mom recites an Islamic prayer to guarantee us a safe flight, whenever she recites these prayers I look over and every time notice at least one person giving us a dirty look. This not only angers me but makes me nervous as I have heard countless stories of Muslims being kicked off planes simply for speaking Arabic or looking like a “terrorist.” I also experienced this in my middle school. I went to an extremely white catholic school, so my attendance there turned me into the token brown kid. I didn’t realize this was the case until well after I graduated eighth grade. Looking over the website of my middle school I noticed one common thing. Myself and the few other people of color were the only people displayed on the website. This made me feel somewhat upset as I felt like the school was only using me for my skin tone in order to give off a false sense of diversity. When in reality this was an extremely white, racist school. I went through years of having my nickname be “bean boy” and kids throwing balls over a fence telling me to climb over and get it just because I’m Mexican. Whenever anything about terrorism was brought up or anything about bombs, everyone in the class would immediately stare at me. This all made me very uncomfortable so when I see it happening to other people it makes me very angry. Along with this I had an incredible Islamophobic side of my family. Going over to their farm every year only to hear constant shade toward part of my bloodline was heartbreaking for me as I felt like I didn’t belong. The only thing that I feel can be done about this is for people to be more accepting of other people cultures. There is no good or bad culture, all people are just people. There are good and bad in every culture, it is just racial stereotypes and racial bias that brainwashes people into believing certain races are superior. This is something I believe all races need to work on. I have witnessed racism from every race out there, white people aren’t the only racists in the world. In order to stop this issue we need to judge everyone equally, and stop picking favorites based off color.