Race and Your Community

Race and Your Community

When it comes to the subject of race, people often go right to the term racism which I find extremely interesting in a society that is very vocal about overcoming racism. For me personally one might say that because I am a white/Caucasian male who was born here in the United States that I have never experienced racism or the struggles of minority groups first hand. To those that feel that way, I would say you are wrong. While I may not have experienced slavery or some of the other outright derogatory treatment, some of the minority groups have undergone, there is still racism that I have experienced. I will provide you with my personal accounts of racism that I have either experienced myself or witnessed firsthand throughout my 30+ years on this earth.

I would like to start by sharing some information with you about my community so you have a frame of reference when I talk about some of my experiences. The most diverse community I interact with is my work or office community. My immediate co-workers consist of a Hawaiian American female, a Hispanic American male, an Asian American female, an Egyptian female, and two Caucasian males. My manager is the Hispanic American who was born and raised in the United States so his ideals are very much “Americanized.” When it comes to looks, I have to say that none of us look alike with respect to skin tone but ironically, we are all dark haired. Other than our hair however, we are as different as different can be. Some of us are tall, some are short, some are thin, and some are on the hefty side. Some of us have oval shaped dark eyes while others have wide, round, light-blue eyes. In the end however, we are all human beings, we all have two arms, two legs, and a face so in that regard we all look pretty similar.

When it comes to treatment in our community, I would like to say that we are all treated equal but that is simply not the case. I think the difference in treatment may be...