Back when I was a kid, I used to wonder why or how people are different, why do we all have different races? When I was in preschool, my mom would always tell me not to play with kids that were bad. Those kids were black. She said that they were troublemakers, misbehaved, and that they don’t have any manners. And of course, I believed her. Most of my life, I only cared about what somebody looked like on the outside. Now, I know how wrong of me it was to assume somebody’s personality. This project has changed me a lot in many ways. It has taught me how we all need to be fair to each other, it has taught me that nobody’s appearance screams out their identity, I have also learned that not everyone is a bad person and that people are different.
Race is not natural, it’s taught.
It all began in the 18th century. Scientists developed categorizing things in nature, including humans. According to the RACE website, “The 19th century also marked a period of widespread racialization—not just of African Americans—but of Native Americans, Mexican Americans and Chinese Americans as well. Much of the racializing of non-Europeans, and even the Irish, served an economic and political purpose.” This is not fair. People were categorized into groups. Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Italians, separated from each other. Why were we categorized? As reported in “The Story of Race and the Classification of People”, “ In 1680 AD, the idea of classification by appearance slowly began to permeate society as lawmakers in the early colonies of North America began to use “white” as a classification of themselves rather than “Englishmen” or “Christians.” See how this is not fair? I’m pretty sure we all have questions about race such as, aren’t we all just one human race? Will racism ever go away? How do we become racists?, How did racism start?, and who started racism? Some of these answers can’t be found…but one thing I know is that race is not a natural thing, it is the others that taught us.
