Lucky to be white?

I’m said to be one of the lucky ones who was born white. I’m from a European country and for me there aren’t many negative stereotypes or racist comments that people can easily come up with. I have to feel lucky that by chance I was born with insurance; an insurance of growing up with little conflict and bullying, of being able to find a job and to not be racially identified as other; as a minority. Unfortunately, many people cannot say they were as lucky as me which is the saddest part about humanity. Everyone should be lucky to be themselves and to be able to enjoy life, however; society has developed certain racial and stereotypical “rules” and “morals” which doesn’t allow everyone to be accepted for who they are. This causes a lot of social, mental and physical problems for people all around the world.

In my opinion, my sister and I can thank our parents that we never in our lives thought about discriminating anyone based on the way they look or speak. My mum recently told me that in her family, no one ever labelled others as “Jews” or “Gypsies” (which at the time were common labels in Hungary) and in the same way in my family we never labelled people by their race or religion as being different. When my sister was 6 years old in 1994, she went to school in America. Someone asked her how she felt about the black kids in her class and her response was; “What do you mean?What black kids?” To her they were just her classmates and friends and were not labelled as a colour. This just demonstrates how much influence parents, teacher and the media have on our perception of others. If we didn’t grow up surrounded by racial comments, discrimination and differentiation, we wouldn’t be racist. Children are born pure but they become their surroundings.

Racism has always been a problem and it saddens me that it isn’t over just yet. There are still many people out there discriminating and judging people due to their skin tone, eye shape or accent. We study that overt racism was when people strongly discriminated against a certain race and they were loud and proud about it. If you thought we have come a long way from segregated drinking fountains, think again. Yes, conditions have become better over the years but sadly I have noticed it come back as well. An example of this is the student at the University of Buffalo who put up “White Only” signs around certain toilets at the campus, supposedly as an art project.  No matter how you try to explain his reasoning, bringing back such overt racism is not right in any way. The boy might have thought it would be laughed off by the students and they won’t care however, it really affects the people discriminated. Another very current and very serious example is the “No Muslims allowed” signs. People discriminate others as if they weren’t human and as if they have no right to be on this planet.