Living in Brownsville for the longest time, I never experienced any racial issues with anyone being that the majority of the city is 90% latino. I grew up speaking Spanish at home and learned English in school. I didn’t know much about other races except white people, most of my elementary teachers where white and there wasn’t ever any feeling of being different. All the white friends I had in school also seemed to have not any problems with the rest of the kids, we all got along pretty well. It wasn’t until I started visiting Houston where I would see a mix of different races such as black and asian that I started seeing things differently. I remember asking my mom when I was small, why there were black people and if they were different to us, which my mom just told me a simple answer “No, they’re not, but just have a different skin color just like we have a different skin color” As I grew older and visited Houston more often during the holidays, the issue of race didn’t become so apparent any longer, I understood that there were many people around the world and that everyone was different and unique.
Now that I am a parent now, it is important I teach my son the values of being different and that it is okay to be different. My wife and I agreed to teach our son in Spanish and that he would learn English in school. At first when he would go to the park and play with other children, it was hard to communicate with the rest of the kids that knew English that I would ask myself if we were doing the right thing in speaking to him Spanish only. I would often see my son feeling lost and not sure what to do since the other children didn’t want to play with him for the sole reason that he didn’t knew English. Now that my son finished Pre-K he was able to pretty much learn English rather quickly and has no problem now playing with the rest of the children and I see him playing with black kids, asian kids, white kids and they all seem to get along just fine, I think he understands without asking me like I did to my mom that they are people who are different from you. When I see my son playing with all these kids and all the other kids playing together, I often ask myself, why do people teach their kids hate from such a young age. Just recently my wife and I went to a Toys R Us to shop around and buy my son some playset. I was in the board games section and she calls me up because she had an argument with a lady (white lady) who was telling her some shit about my son playing with her son. My wife said that the lady was rude to her because my son had touched her son and she started dusting him off as if my son was filthy or something, so course I was pretty pissed when she said this. Now I don’t know if the lady was just being a fucking bitch or if she was racist towards my wife and son, hard to tell since when I got there, she was all nice and everything, maybe she noticed I spoke pretty good English that she changed demeanor, but good thing she did because if she would of said something stupid, I would of chewed her ass out. In a country such as ours, the United States we seem to have all these racial issues, although I think Europe has a lot of racial issues either similar or worse. But where does the issue come from?
It really comes down to our culture and society and most importantly the values we place on our children at an early age. Ever watched the Discovery Channel? Or maybe not so much now but they used to show all these hidden tribes in the Amazon who never seen outsiders and when they come in contact with people from the outside world, they freak out and even try to kill the foreigners? I think it’s like that in modern times, for many people who come in contact with other people from outside your race, they may just freak out and if you have your parents telling you that these other people are the enemy and evil, then you will also think the same also and grow up with hate. There is no room for racism in modern society and it needs to be done away with period. There will always be stereotypes of races and which to a certain point I can agree with and have a laugh about it, but when you start telling your children not to play with others simply because the other children are a different race, then right there, that is a problem.
It’s okay to be different and like Michael Jackson sang during the 90’s, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, or asian, latino, etc..
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