I am part of the 92%
Jacqueline Gittens,
New York, NY
92% of Black women voted against Donald Trump. Without deciding in some private chat we voted as a bloc. The sisterhood and community that I felt after seeing those statistics touched me at my core. I love being a Black woman in America. We may be the most disrespected but we are sisters and neither power nor time can take that from us.
No, I’m “really” from New York.
Kate Lee van Loveren,
Ann Arbor, MI.
I was born in New York, grew up in New York, and live in New York (when I’m not at school). I’m of half Chinese and half Dutch descent, but for some people that registers into me not being American for some reason. Just by looking at me, people will ask where I’m from. I will say New York and ask where they are from, knowing the question they’re going to ask next. Like expected, they ask where I’m REALLY from because I must have been lying to them the first time. I’m REALLY from New York. Did you know that people from other countries can immigrate into the United States and live in America and raise families in America and have American citizenship and be AMERICAN? Fascinating, I know.
“Immigrant” comes in all races/colors.
Jackie Spencer,
New York, NY.
The generalization we attach to people based on race is appalling. As an example when you speak of “immigrants” you do not think of this white blond person! I hope that raising this point makes people think before they generalize. We are all individuals with different beliefs and personalities and looks, but at the core we are all the same. Vive La Differance!
Cultural Gatekeepers Defile Black People’s Beauty
Deborah Sanders
New York, NY
Racism has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that we are often only able to recognize the most obvious aggressions. Even when we do recognize it, we often feel helpless to resist its powerful grip on our psyche. I think that much of the obstacles to achieving a post-racial society is the constant reinforcement of the ‘what is beautiful is good, what is beautiful is white paradigm’ being relentlessly forwarded by cultural gatekeepers such as the advertising industry and the entertainment industry.
This gatekeeper sector of society which chooses who goes on the covers of magazines, who gets the leading movie role as a symbol of beauty and who gets labeled sexy and so forth, has an overbearing and pervasive influence on the way we judge a person’s worth. According to them and the messages they espouse, first and foremost, a person and especially a woman must be beautiful to be worthy. Second, they narrowly define beauty in a way that excludes the natural features of black people. What follows, is an entire race of the people assumed to be bad by everyone, often including many of them, themselves.
I believe that the cultural gatekeepers violate the civil rights of a large segment of society by its damaging use of idealized images of beauty that influence how people value others. It impacts our ability to earn a living, to mate, attract friends and studies show that it even impacts the way teachers react to our children. When we as a society are bold enough to enforce civil rights laws and stop cultural gatekeepers from defining beauty, we will go along way towards eradicating racism.
White Martial Artist, who’s not White.
Gerard Liston,
New York, NY.
The way I look confuses people. Most cant pin point my heritage. I am by birth Irish and Ecuadorian. Furthering my cultural heritage is my love of music. I love to play the drums and that love took me all the way to Africa. There I learned to play the dejembe (jem-be). Another factor that contributes to my cultural heritage is my love of Martial Arts. It brings my balance and understanding. Last but not least my soon to be wife is Dominican. She has shown me a love of this culture through food and traditions. So all in all my heritage is Irish, Ecuadorian, Dominican, Japanese, the greater part of Africa, American, and a New Yorker.
Looking at me you don’t see
Raquel Saunders,
New York, NY.
My dad is half black and my mom is white, when look at me you only really see the white. But I am a quarter black, and when I say that people look at me like I just gave them a lie. It pisses me off. Don’t judge me on how I look.
Anti-Semitism and anti-white exist
Sally Ann Siegel
New York, NY
I experience anti-white and anti-Semitism occasionally from black women.
“You’ve sold out; you’re too white.”
Gianna Donovan,
New York, NY.
Turban, Assumptions, Fear, Perpetually Foreign, Resistance
Simran Jeet Singh,
New York, NY.
Trinity University
My visible Sikh and South Asian identity have shaped my experiences with racial and cultural identities. Upon seeing me, people mark me as different and make various assumptions about me. Associations assume (but are not limited to): foreign, violent, conservative, uneducated, terrorist, victim, uncivilized, and dogmatic.
Indigenous and religiously evangelical equal colonized?
Chantilly Mers
New York, NY
I am the daughter of parents who migrated from Palau, a small cluster of islands between Guam and the Philippines. Ethnically, I am Palauan and Chinese, and my siblings and I grew up in Hawaii. Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian is usually the box I check. In addition to my inherent multi-cultural identity, where in Hawaii we are taught to learn multiple body and language codes, it’s sometimes at church that I find the most trouble reconciling my multiple identities. I converted to Christianity in high-school, in an all white church that taught me God redeems culture and people groups. As I get older, I realize that white evangelicalism doesn’t redeem culture; in fact it colonizes cultures and identities to fit the white-American evangelical mold. How do I reconnect with my indigenous religion and culture, when my professed faith is dominantly euro-centric? Is there a middle space bridging these identities? Am I another colonized body?
Sick of being “The White Girl”
Ellie Warring,
New York, NY.
I am a 14 year old white female and every single day I am judged for my skin color. Everyone assumes that because I am white I am a Trump supporter, rich, happy all the time, racist, and snobby. They tell me that I have no culture. And I’m tired of it. I am the same person as you. I have a heart and a brain and I need food and water just like you. I may be a different color but is that supposed to mean something? Am I terrible for being lighter than you? Do you expect me to fit your stereotypes too? Or can we be equal? I have a friend who is not white. I have known her for a very long time but I am not as close with her as her other friends because of my skin color. I want to be equal to my peers. Not all white people are as terrible as you may think! Please do not assume. I am the same as you. Please, remember that. I love everyone no matter what color they are. I am white and I am not racist. Please everyone, do not think bad of others based on their skin color.
East Europe substitutes Roma for Blacks
Harold Svignor,
New York, NY.
Humans inherently think in “Me up – You down” terms. We are innately tribal, and somewhat hostile to “the other”. That proclivity has created not only tribal strife, but war, sport, and many other human traits. It is universal and cannot be overcome….except by religious self denial. Non-caucasians have yet to learn this lesson, by and large.
See: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/europe-failing-to-protect-roma-from-discrimination-and-poverty-a-942057.html
African American but not black
Rewan,
New York, NY.
I’m 15 years old, and I live in New York. My parents were both born and raised in Egypt and moved here in the ’80s. Let me cut to the chase- I’ve been called white, Hispanic, “light skin,” but I consider my self Arabic, because Egyptians speak Arabic and is located in the Middle East. But in schools, or anything under the city, i have no idea what to put for my race. What even is white?? Does it mean Caucasian? Why isn’t there an ‘other’ for some things? WHY DO THEY EVEN ASK FOR RACE? doesnt everyone like to say race doesnt matter? well, apparently it does if your asking me. can I just put African American? Its true, Egypt is in africa, everyone uses African American as a more polite way to say black. There are light African Americans, just as there are black people that arent African american, like Caribbeans. but i guess thats just the way it is.
White People Tears Are My Lipton’s
Alex Miller,
New York, NY.
White people. Some of you, not all… please notice that I said SOME…some of you have been wondering, for a while, “Why am I always called a racist?” “Why do blacks blame me for slavery? My family never owned slaves!” And that sort of gives me pause because: What, did you think you were special? Everyone in America gets it! Do you think you have it worse than anybody else who gets called names or epithets? Cuz I got news for ya Bub… nuh uh.
So, maybe your family didn’t bring Native Americans Small Pox blankets mixed with a side of Christianity. Your ancestors may not have owned slaves, castrated, and lynched them. Or maybe you don’t know anyone who made the Chinese pan for gold or dig trenches until they died on the spot. You probably don’t know anyone who turned away Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust…or anyone who flooded society with leaflets of caricatures accusing them of being Nazi spies. You may not have even been alive when Reefer Madness instilled in the minds of millions an image of a raving mad Mexican “wetback”. I don’t think you ever interned any Japanese Americans during WWII because “they might be working for the enemy” in barely functioning shacks, while their businesses went into disrepair and got looted. You may, or may not, have made crazy ass Apu from the Simpsons-inspired jokes, with an Apu-inspired voice, to trash and degrade Indians, Sri Lankans, or Bengalis. And I pray to everything you never were a member of the current group of Islamaphobes obsessed with how “terrible every Muslim is” and physically attacked Arabs (who may not have actually been Muslim) just because of how they look and your preconceived notions of how much of a threat they might be.
Relax, my friends, dry your eyes. The Irish, the Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Croatians, Germans, Scandinavians, even Brits, have all been victims of hate and bias in this nation. I think a major difference, in this country, is that those people of European origin, eventually get fully indoctrinated into society purely off the basis of how closely they resemble the “purebred American, the All-American.” But this is how it works.
You may not have done anything, been involved with any racist faction on the planet, hurt a single soul. You may have had immigrant ancestors from European nations who got treated like utter dog shi*; but each time I get online and get called “cotton picker” “n*****” any variation of primate, or get told I’m a part of the “13%” (despite the fact I’ve never committed a crime in my life, let alone a violent one), by a different person, I don’t feel sorry for myself. It just tells me there’s plenty more where that came from. Race is as important now as it’s ever been. And if all you can do is point fingers at others for not making America a better place, if you’re not actively getting out there and helping to change America, then it’s problematic to expect people with less of a resemblance to those who caused so many problems to minority communities, to do more. Stop crying. Start changing.
Hated wearing green on St.PatrickDay mom.
Daniel Luis Soto
New York, NY
I consider myself Puerto Rican. Grandparents from PR My great grandfather on mom’s side is from Ireland. Going further back on both sides my heritage spans the globe from Spain to England to various British occupied islands. Im proud of my diversity, but I look Puerto Rican speak Spanish as my parents and grandparents have. My wife was born in P.R., so my kids know their background but are proud of Puerto Ricans.
Stop acting like blacks are saints
Jimmy,
New York, NY
Obviously 400 years of segregation is the cause of today’s black society. And obviously, there is a tremendous amount of white trash, idiots who think Trump is a good businessman, great man, knows what he’s doing, and a class act. There are so many white pedophiles, liars, cheaters, thieves, senseless bigots, and a-holes, the number is in the tens of millions. And I fully believe that they’d occupy the same roles black people do if white ppl had been enslaved and exiled like blacks were.
So maybe in that sense, I am not racist at all, in that I know circumstance is responsible for the differences in races now.
But I also can’t stand my fellow white liberals who act as if black people are angels when the only ones they know are successful highly-educated black individuals they might at their prestigious colleges.
I live near the projects, and the lack of manners, lack of decency, promotion of killing, drugs, recklessness, disrespect as a way of life, is appalling. This is a major part of black culture, whether you like it or not. And my close black friends willingly admit to this.
Black people don’t want to have dialogues in this country, they want monologues, where white ppl sit there, listen, then do everything that was told for them to do to “make things right.” Reparations in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. They hate the police, yet tell us how awful it is to be black because of all the violence. All the violence is within the community, not coming from the outside, and the only way to solve it is from education and policing. Yet so few black ppl I know take education seriously.
I guess what I’m saying is that yeah white ppl would be in that place, and have those issues if they’d been oppressed, but liberal America needs to shut up and stop acting like black people are the angels that they aren’t. Poor black people are just the same as poor white people… and as the poor white people in rural, downtrodden, crummy areas, they are under-educated, prone to violence, drugs, love disrespect and pi**ing off society and hate the cops. And the black people who were raised in privilege tend to be much higher caliber, just like white people of the same circumstance.
In other words, they’re humans… mostly pretty shi**y, some pretty good, a small percent really great, just like
whites and Chinese and Hispanics.
But given they are where they are, they need to step it up and break the culture of promoting violence, dropping out of school, having babies as teenagers, fighting, drug dealing, and disrespecting women and gay people.
