Racing to Judge Others

Brooke Heald, staff writer

Racism is an extremely common occurrence that surrounds everyday life.

Almost anywhere I go, I see something or someone who reflects the problem of racism.

When I was growing up, I was raised by a man who is very racist. I couldn’t date or even be friends with anyone who was not Caucasian. When I was in seventh grade, I met a Hispanic guy who I really enjoyed hanging out with, and we had a lot of things in common.

Well, we started “going out,” and we made it two weeks before my dad found out. He came to pick me up from school one day, and I was sitting with this guy. He got out of his car, pulled me away and told my “boyfriend” that I was his daughter and that I was not going to date some Hispanic guy. I was forever scared by that experience. Not only did he embarrass me in front of my whole school, but a lot of people quit talking to me because of the way my dad acted.

When I hear someone talking about another race or making a racial joke, I cringe in disgust. It’s not funny, and it’s definitely not a moral way to be. The church I was raised in always taught that when you get married to marry someone of your same color and not to stray from your race. I hated it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about it being a sin or immoral to marry someone that is not your “color.” It makes me so mad to see when churches are going down this road, and even worse to think I was a part of a church like that once.

I have a friend that has a confederate flag hanging over his doorway. Whenever you talk about African American people around him, he’ll ramble on for hours about the subject. My question is, “What is the problem with them?” Nothing is wrong with them. They are the same as Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, or Native Americans. All that is different is some of our cultures, the shape of our face or the color of our skin. We are equal under God, and we all share the same rights under the United States Constitution. It breaks my heart to see when prejudice and people collide.  It’s not right, and it’s not sane.

I wish I could go to a party and have fun without seeing a fight start out between a black guy and a white guy.  This has happened at almost every party I’ve attended. It was either because one of them wasn’t welcome because of his skin color or he didn’t agree on something. So they found it appropriate to hurl racial slurs at each other and start swinging to see who is better. It is the stupidest, most hurtful thing anyone could ever do or go through.

Even when a white person comes along who thinks everyone is wonderful and just wants to make friends, not caring about skin color, he or she sets kicked in the butt for it. When I lived in Houston, I was friends with everyone. It was a very tight knit school where no one was judged by anything. Then I came to Lubbock, and all that was gone.      

Many of the elderly people here, such as grandparents, have something against Hispanics and African Americans for some reason. They make them out like all they are good for is construction work and farm hands. That’s not true at all. What about Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks or Booker T. Washington? They were all Blacks who made a positive difference in our world. But, obviously everyone has lost touch of that fact. 

This standard of living has got to change. Once we get past the stubbornness and stupidity of the racist, and open our eyes to new beginnings and the beautiful world we really do live in, nothing will change. We are still living in the time of slavery. We are slaves to each other’s discrimination.