Let's talk about something that some people are more familiar with than others: racism.
What is racism exactly? Well, according to the dictionary racism is definded as "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior." But for people like me, it's part of the daily routine.
Now, I'm not saying I feel oppressed or bullied or my sense of self worth is affected at all by it, it just gets old hearing the same things day after day. As a Mexican-American, on the daily I hear my fair share of Trump jokes and wall jokes and border jokes. For crying out loud I was born in California. Yes, I am a legal citizen. No, I'm not scared Trump will deport me. No, I've never even been near the border of Mexico. Even at my work place, I have people mockingly "speaking Spanish" to me. By the way, adding "el" to the beginning of a word and an "o" at the end does not suddenly make it Spanish.
It's one thing for my close friends to occasionally joke about my race in good nature, but when a person I've barely talked to sits there and rants on about "my kind" and belittles me for my skin color, lines are being crossed. Yet, if I ask them to kindly stop, suddenly "I need to chill, it's just a joke." Well, excuse me if I don't find your snarky and rude comments very funny.
And since when is it okay to try to get someone's attention by using derogatory terms? If you wouldn't call someone of African origin "the n-word", why in the world is it okay to call me a "spic" or a "wetback"?
One incident really sticks out in my mind, and I sat and thought about it for a really long time. On a recent trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, a mother of darker skin tone and her two young toddlers were enjoying an exhibit. Anyone who has ever been around small children knows that they get a little too excited sometimes, and express their energy by flailing their tiny limbs. Well, one of the children was expressing his excitement by tapping on the glass. A nearby man saw this and angrily exclaimed, "You stupid foreign, can't you read? The sign says don't tap on the glass." A lot of things bothered me about this comment. First of all, have you ever been around a child? They are basically equivalent to a squirrel that took 3 shots of espresso. You try to tell a little kid that he needs to contain his excitement and compose himself, and tell me how well it works. Second of all, maybe they couldn't read the sign. Maybe she had just moved there for whatever reason, and was still learning English. How about we drop you into a foreign country and expect you to learn the language in a day? Either way, there are so many different ways that gentleman could have gone about things. Why did race have to come into play?
It bothers some more than others. For people who have never experienced it, it's "No big deal, just people being babies." For others, it is extremely infuriating. For me, it's more of an annoyance. Like, come on, it's 2017. Does the color of my skin really get to you that much? Maybe instead of hating others for not being familiar or understanding, teach them. Welcome them. Try to make peace, not put up barriers. Like Nelson Mandela once said, "People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love."
