Before I begin, I just want to point out a few things. I'm a straight, white female. I know that I can never fully begin understand what it's like being a minority. I know that being white gives me certain privileges whether I realize it or not. However, I can't change who I am. This is the way I was born. But what I can do is stand up with the minorities in my country. If the majority doesn't, then who are we?
Some of the best friends I could ever ask for are black, gay or both. I have some gay relatives. I would be devastated if any of the people I love were victims of a hate crime. I can't change that I was born white, and they can't change that they were born black or gay. It's just how they were meant to be. So why is that a problem? Why can't they live as they are supposed to without suffering hatred? We are all just people. If a group of people of all ethnicities and sexual orientations were X-rayed, our insides would look the same. But, if some people look different on the outside or have a different sexual preferences, we do we feel we have to hate them? What exactly did they do to deserve that?
But, we have equal rights. Oh, we do? I didn't realize that. Sure, it might be said that we do. Sure, people like to believe that we do. I would even like to believe that we do. We don't. People are dying because of who they are. People are getting hurt, mentally and physically, because of who they are. People get treated unfairly all the time because of who they are. If you believe that we all have equal rights, look up the facts. Actually, I'll give you some:
Statistics prove that we are far from post-racism. In 2010, white Americans held 88 percent of the country's wealth while black Americans only 2.7 percent. There have been instances where if a white person and a black person have the same level of education and the same type of resumé, the white person is more likely to be hired. The racial wealth gap actually widened well after the Civil War, which was supposed to bring equality. Furthermore, black people are punished more frequently and more harshly than their white counterparts. While black children only make up 18 percent of preschool enrollment, they make up 42 percent of the preschoolers suspended once and 48 percent of the children suspended more than once. If a black person is convicted, they receive longer sentences than a white person for the same crime.
LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, black, transgender, queer) teenagers are two or three times more likely to commit suicide due to bullying in their schools. A survey showed that 82 percent of LGBTQ youth had problems with bullying because of their sexual orientation. Another survey showed that 8 to 17 percent of gay or transgender people were turned down for a job or fired because of their sexual identity. Forty-three percent have experienced some form of discrimination in their workplace and 90 percent of transgender workers have experienced harassment or were mistreated on the job.
According to statistics, as of 2014, 47 percent of hate crimes were racially motivated and 18.6 percent were about sexual orientation. I'm not going to go into detail about this because we are aware of so many occurrences in the news. However, two big instances that come to mind are the Orlando shooting and the Charleston church shooting. The Orlando shooting was a hate crime against the gay community, in which 49 people were killed and 53 were injured. The Charleston church shooting was another mass shooting where a man killed nine black people, including the pastor, in the hope of starting a race war.
My best friend, who is a straight, black woman said, "We're not waithing for for white people to help us. We're looking for their support. If the majority steps in, it will become a domino effect to the rest of the population. Nobody is stepping in to help. All they're doing is liking posts."
So let's do more than "like posts." Let's do something about this problem.
