The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Francis,
Livingston, MT
If the civil war had gone differently I could have been born a slave. The children of slaves are almost always slaves. My great great grandmother was native and many thousands of natives were captured and sold into slavery.
Lara Jean DeShayes,
Oakland, CA.
I was born in Olongapo Philippines to a Filipina mom and French-American Naval seaman. In Oakland, I’m often assumed to be Latina or Hispanic but as I’ve travelled around the world, people often mistaken me for someone of their own race: Turkish in Istanbul, Greek in Athens, Italian in Naples, Catalonian in Barcelona. In the world of multiracialness growing, I find it odd for people to assume what race you are by looks. Why not just ask?
Blair Brown,
Baltimore, MD.
“To boldly go where no one has gone before.” These words have defined the human experience long before they were ever spoken aloud or put down on paper.
I am neither interested in,nor feel the need to rehash our past in this country. Frankly what I do know is much more than I care to remember. I am more interested in moving forward into the future. Into the unknown.
Unfortunately,for us all,there are those of us in this country-on both sides-who are unwilling or unable to let go of the divisions between us despite the face that those divisions are merely on the surface. They seem content to raise the spectres of the past,uncomfortable with the idea of confronting the hard questions of the future and the potentially wonderful and awesome possibilities over the next horizons. Of seeing what’s beyond ourselves and into the new frontiers. both here and beyond our world.
Furthermore there are those who are not only determined to hold us back,but seek to regress us to a time before freedom was a right of all sentient beings and was instead the province of a chosen few,the elite who actively seek to have their every conscious decision made for them by petty and brutal tyrants whose unquestioned power would check-if not halt altogether-every human endeavor which would continue our spiritual and physical evolution and have us do nothing but sing the praises of the Slavemaster day and night for all eternity. Worse yet,these pitiful….idiots….seek not lonely to deepen preexsisting divides but to create new ones to further their need for continued ignorance amongst the masses who would otherwise see their lies for what they were and rise up against them.
Only when we are willing to do this,will these hideous divisions continue to impede our growth as a people,a species and as a civilization
It is my fervent hope that one day all the flags of the world-from the U.S. Flag to the Rainbow will one day be hauled down-because we don’t need those flags anymore-because will all have choosen of our own free will,to unite under a new banner,one tha will one day encompass the whole Universe.
Taylor Jackson,
Tuscaloosa, AL.
The race card might come off as confusing since I am a white man and my race card has a different race in it, but I hear that phrase all the time these days and that is really sad that this generation has come to this when bad things happen around the country. I bring this up, because people of other races seem to think that just because I’m a white man, I will always have it better in life than most and I won’t face as many struggles as they will growing up. It’s not only sad but disappointing that this is attitude they have because of past actions that have happen lately.
This past weekend, a video surfaced around the country about 3 students getting tazed and beat by several police officers due to a noise complaint. If you have seen any of the 4 videos, you cant disagree with me when I say that the screams from the girl and the overall videos are just hard to watch and leave a bad taste in your mouth. I’m not bringing up this video to talk about the attack, but because I could not tell you how many times in comment sections on social media or people in person say, “At least they we not black” Black, white, blue, purple, I don’t care, we should not be in a state of mind where if some kind of police brutality happens, we need to be thankful the victims were not black so it doesn’t come across as racism for those people in the community. It’s just sad to see and hear and this needs to be an issue we should all put a little bit more focus on and try to fix the problem.
Ileana Serrano,
Sacramento, CA.
Whenever people try and guess my “race”, I usually get different responses, but they’re always followed by “mixed with white”. My skin tone might be a bit more fair than what people may think Mexicans are supposed to look like, but that doesn’t make me any less Mexican. I’m not mixed with white, or European, or anything. It’s almost as if people are happy for me when they think I’m “mixed with white” and I really don’t understand why, as if being Mexican mixed with white is supposed to make me better or more proud as opposed to just being Mexican. Regardless of my skin tone, I am human, just like anyone else, “mixed with white” or not. And I am happy with that.
Reem Totonchi,
Madison, WI.
The guesses are almost never correct, unless they come from a fellow Middle-Easterner. “Where are you from?” they ask, eyes smiling and already knowing. “I’m half-Iraqi and half-Irish,” I say with a smile back. I never mind the question when it’s like this; less accusatory and exotifying than usual. In a lifelong search for home and place when both homes are so far away and my father’s is nearly extinct, I feel home in the knowing eyes and smile of my extended family, though they may be strangers. I seek cultural connections wherever I can find them and let the warmth of familiar accents, skin tones, and music flood over me as much as possible. I will always be searching.
Ed Houlemarde,
Duarte, CA.
I am what is considered a Creole – depending on wher I am I can be lumped into that areas primary race. In school I did not belong to a “race” Because my skin is olive I had mostly minority friends or friends of color. Teaches and later co-workers thought I was Mexican, Black, East Indian, Jamaican, Spanish and my favorite Italian.Even today people will ask what nationality I am and when I say mixed – they assume one of my parents is black. When I say my parents are from New Orleans they say -Oh.
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