Indya Black,
My life’s as precious as yours
Patricia Burns,
Los Angeles, CA.
Thank you.
All my life: “What are you?”
Patricia Williams,
Encinitas, CA.
Thank you for creating this project!
Survived racism, the depression and Korea!
Ron Corley,
Montrose, CO.
I’m 81 years old, and I’ve seen life from the worst to the best.
Life is Beautiful Don’t Stop Living
Emma GreenWood,
USA.
I live by these words. I believe life is beautiful, no matter how difficult. Every day we wake up, we never know what’s in store for us. It’s exciting and wonderful to just be alive, that’s why it’s “being alive”. Being alive is amazing, and fulfilling. Before we know it, life is over. What we anticipated, what we were excited for, what we were waiting for, even what we were stressed about. It all comes and goes so quickly. Before we know it, it will all be over. So life is beautiful, life is all about living. So let’s never stop living, let’s never stop trying to live.
Too much of the time, life is taken for granted. When things don’t go according to plan, what was pursued wasn’t gained, when something unplanned occurs, it becomes difficult to appreciate life; leaving it difficult to feel lucky to have anything to begin with. The only thing that can be done with life is to live it.
Tragedy happens every day. So why is so much of our time taken up by us forgetting how beautiful life is? It’s because we forget to live, we start to get into a schedule and end up just being alive. Being alive is more than just waking up to an alarm and starting the day off with a cup of coffee then ending it with brushing our teeth. To be alive is to live. Living is stepping out of our comfort zones, trying new things, being open minded, just trying to get the most out of everything we have. So let’s not die young full regrets of things we wanted to do.
I breathe life into them, bagpipes.
Kenton Adler,
Batesville, AR.
Together we can do it better
Ben Tallcott,
Houston, TX.
My life has given me the experience of many cultures and races. I have learned that our differences create a wealth of creativity and knowledge. When we combine these backgrounds together and take the time to listen and learn, we see the answers to many questions. Together we can achieve more than through our own myopic view of life.
Forced me to see broader humanity.
Douglas Moore,
Sharon, VT.
Raised white, male, Midwestern and Republican the movement broke open so many of the absolutes in my life.
What am I supposed to say?
Zack Ritchie,
Boulder, CO.
I am a white male. Race doesn’t play a very important role in my life. I go through my daily activities without having to think about how people view the color of my skin. My uncle, however, is African American. His children, my cousins, have dark skin. Because of that, race plays an important role in their lives. They are subjects of racism every day and feel very strongly about racial issues. I want to relate, but I simply don’t have the same experiences they do. Although we share grandparents, I’ve lived a completely different life and I don’t don’t know how to talk about it.
Endowed by birth, merited by action.
Bill Gricko,
Monmouth University
This statement is about equal and inalienable human rights to life, liberty, and to pursue happiness that are afforded to all humans by virtue of their humanity. Respect of those rights by others is warranted only by one’s action – that all people respect all others’ rights to the same.
See me, not my skin color.
Refugio Zavala,
Stockton, CA.
All throughout my life, people have judged me by the color of my skin. When I was in the United States, people would call me things like “beaner” and “wetback.” These are racial slurs meant to humiliate and make me ashamed of my culture. So what that I liked to eat beans? They are delicious and a nutritious part of a healthy diet. When did dietary choices become a way to shame another person? But when I went to visit family in Mexico, my olive skin and hazel eyes made me a white boy to them. It felt as if I did not fit in anywhere. This was especially difficult because out of my 6 brothers, I was the only one who had the skin tone and the eye color. Most of them were darker and had brown eyes. I felt like a stranger even in my own immediate family. However, as I got older, I learned to ignore the mean and hurtful things that people said. I told myself their opinions were of little importance anyways. When I met girlfriend, I had never been happier, it never occurred to me that she was Asian and I was Mexican. She was just the wonderful girl I fell in love with and I never looked at her as being Asian. Most people did not feel this way though. Wherever we went, people would do doubletakes and stare at us as if we were the only interracial couple they had ever seen. When I took her to meet family, even though she spoke fluent Spanish, they would immediately point out the fact that I am dating a “chinita,” meaning a little Chinese girl. Remarks such as these and people’s stares and comments did not bother me much until my girlfriend’s father found out about our relationship. To clarify, he had been completely fine with her having a boyfriend because he had incorrectly assumed form my pictures that I was Asian. For two years, my girlfriend heard no objections from him. But due to a profile picture update, he realized I was Mexican. He tried to coerce my girlfriend into breaking up with me simply because of my ethnicity. He told her that Mexicans did not have the same values as Asians and they were a disloyal people. When my girlfriend refused to break up with me, her father said that she was dead to him and proceeded to cut her out of his life for almost 2 years. I just want people to see me for the person I am. I am more than my race, more than my skin color. Please get to know me first.
Crazy Family Learning Acceptance Loving Life
Brett Corey Miller,
Athens, GA.
Told to see race, am puzzled
Jeff Marks,
Mountain View, CA.
I have been hearing about the importance of “seeing race” a lot lately. What does this mean for my life? It can’t mean I should TRY to categorize people, should it? I often meet people that don’t easily fit in a standard racial category. For me, I will take it to mean three things. One is to be aware of my own reaction to people’s differences, and to not assume I don’t react differently to different people. The second is to be aware of the diversity of different areas of my life. “Seeing” if there are any black people in management roles at work can be good at identifying a lack of diversity. The third is to see the uniqueness of others. I find that if I focused on trying to really “see” someone I want to get to know better, an identification of that person as having a particular racial identity is ….. sorry, but not that helpful. Culture, yes. Experiences, yes. Stories, yes. There are many times when someone’s culture and experiences are very different than what one would expect from a racial category. Am I missing something here? Is my understanding of what it means to “see race” what other people mean by that? If not, should we even be using this shorthand advice to “see race”, or replace it with something more specific? I read advice to teachers on the importance of seeing the race of their students, but what I got out of the article was not the importance of seeing race, but really seeing the unique environment each of their students is living in. I am not going to advise people to “see race”, but to see a lot more. Really, again, am I missing something here?
I do no fear other humans.
Tricia Elliott,
Plano, TX.
One of my favorite authors is Grace Halsell who wrote In Their Shoes. I think it’s a humanizing experience to be a minority at least once in your life.
Life in the borderlands is painful.
Kaller,
Portland, OR.
Native American grandfather, Quaker grandmother, their child was my mother. Black stepfather, biracial brother, adopted Latina child, all Chinese grade school, segregation, race riots, the battle for Civil Rights…who are “my people?”
Embrace your race, don’t abuse it
Julia Hirsch,
Rockville, MD.
I have experienced white privilege several times during my life. I am grateful for everything that I have, but I need to periodically remind myself not to take these things for granted. Just because I have white privilege doesn’t mean I should discriminate, stereotype, or be prejudiced. This is also true for people of other races and they shouldn’t succumb to the stereotypes that society assigns them.
