Race is a man-made concept. It’s not real. Biologically, one cannot trace race through DNA. So, why does racism continue and persist on-- year after year, decade after decade? We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Growing up in a predominately White town, I was never fully immersed in a diverse environment. Once I got to college, I noticed a significant difference. Sometimes I was even the minority in some of my classes. And guess what? There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. I embraced the opportunity to learn about other people from different backgrounds and their cultures.

I was not raised to “see color” as both of my parents played collegiate sports and have a lot of African American friends. I was astonished when I started hearing about just how bad racism still is. It was heartbreaking and yet it was something I knew I could never fully relate to.

Two of my roommates are African American. Both of them have opened up to me about how they still feel that they are treated inferior to other races. People make assumptions about them just because of the color of their skin.

They told me that they can’t walk around at night without suspicions from police cars that drive by. When they walk into a classroom full of White students, they are stared at. They expressed how their African Americana Studies class was truly the only one in which they felt as though they could relate entirely to one another.

I was appalled at what I was hearing.

We live in 2017. We have had an African American president. We have successful professors, doctors, and lawyers who are not White. I would like to think that our country has evolved past the point of discriminatory behavior-- but we haven’t.

What makes it O.K. to treat someone as though they are any less of a person than you are because of what they look like? It sounds ridiculous and that’s because it is. It is an utter disgrace that we still make our neighbors, co-workers, and classmates feel this way.

We seriously need to step our sh*t up. There is going to be absolutely no hope for the future if individuals in this country continue to choose to outwardly express blatant acts of segregation.

This country was founded entirely on the basis of equality. For each and every individual to have an equal opportunity-- regardless of where they came from, what they look, or the color of their skin. We are doing an injustice to those who come here under the impression that they truly have as much as an advantage as anyone else.

As elementary as it may sound, it is important to treat everyone the way in which you would want to be treated. Simply being kind to one another and refraining from passing judgments is not hard to do.

Although we are not where we should be, America has made great strides and we have come a long way from where we were. I can only have hope that moving forward, the prejudice will continue to subside and diminish completely.