Wishing for a happily ever after.
Shania,
USA.
She is tired of all the cooking and cleaning. She just wants to be a normal girl and be free.
Cleaning myself to look like her
Matthew Garcia,
Salinas, CA.
I’m African-American, my mother would have my stay at my baby sitters house after school while she was working. One day my mom picked me up from my baby sitters house but before we left my mom and the babysitter were having conversation. I was playing in the living room when i noticed how different my mom (Black) and baby sitter (White) were in terms of color. I the didn’t understand why our color was different and I guess it never mattered to me anyways but anyways I started to scratch myself and rub myself harshly. My mom and baby sitter noticed and mom asked “Son what are you doing?” I replied, “Im cleaning myself to look like her.” *points at baby sitter.* Both laugh, it was my first experience and conscious thought on how different we seemed to be in color.
No, Where Are You Actually From?
Shagun Doshi,
Naperville, IL.
Coming from a predominately rich, white suburb, and not being rich and white has been an interesting experience. While there is a lot more diversity within my community compared to many others, there is still a lot of hostility. The divide between white and every other race is very prevalent; as it is in many places throughout America. I never really got to know the people that surrounded me until I started working at the local Jewel-Osco. This job not only consisted of cleaning dirty bathrooms and pushing carts that were ten times my size, but I also encountered some of the most ignorant people that I lived amongst. I eventually lost count of the amount of times that people asked where I was from or started the conversation with some Hindi word that I didn’t know. The surprising part was that it wasn’t only old, white people that made such assumptions, it was also many Indian people. I was offended that even though I was born in America, had lived in Naperville most of my life, went to school in America, and saw myself as an American, people were still only looking at what I represented on the outside. While my Indian culture influences a lot of my values and beliefs, the American culture that I have been brought up into also attributes for my personality and views. So yes, even though my skin color and my ethnicity is 100% brown, I am actually from America.
I AM MEXICAN, NOT AN IMMIGRANT.
R.E.A.L. Talk,
High Tech Middle Media Arts,
7th Grade Trailblazer
I have watched movies and shows where actors make fun of Mexicans. This really doesn’t bother me because I learned not to let it. Negative comments towards me used to bother me in the past where I would get to the point where I would want to hit people, but now I am chill. But still I feel like it’s not right, they need to stop because people who are watching this will get offended and get mad at this because like I said, it’s not right. When I hear the word immigrant I think of Mexicans because now that people see us like that, it make me think the same which makes me mad. I feel that when people hear the word immigrant they think of us, the Mexicans and now that Donald Trump is in they election it makes it worse because now people see us as drug dealers and criminals. I live near a lot of Mexicans and most of my friend are Mexicans also. I do say Mexican jokes too. In my old school I got in a roast session and the person I was roasting with said “Go back to cleaning something that’s what you’re good at.” So if he wants to be racist it makes me want to racist too. He was a Caucasian so I said a few things that I don’t want to say right now but let’s say it wasn’t nice. After the battle we were fine we started laughing but still we shouldn’t have done that. So the thing is about me is I really don’t care what people say about me. I think of it as a joke when people say bad things about me. So if you see me in a garden, I’m just trying to make money. If you won’t do it, I will. We’re not stealing your jobs, we are fixing and making jobs better so if you don’t like that then you go to Mexico and you go start a job there and see how it is.
Does Race Exist in This World? NO!
Race does not exist at all. If I were you I would agree because this going to get real right now. The reason this word exists is because in the 18th century when the Americans came to Africa to collect slaves, basically for slave labor, they needed to depict a way to separate White people from Black people. Ok imagine you doing what you do with your family and then these people come and take you from your family and then they make you as their slave. What would you do? Nothing! But now, we can do something about it and people can’t do anything about it. You know what I mean? If you hear a white man saying that black people suck, you can’t punch them. You can talk to them but not touch him or her. Donald Trump says mean comments about Blacks, Mexicans, and Muslims. But, we shouldn’t do anything to him. WE made race up basically just so that we can judge each other. One thing that I don’t understand is why we still depict people by the color of their skin. We don’t want this to keep going. We stopped slavery in America between blacks and whites so we can stop racism! So let’s do it!
