Some time ago, a Puerto Rican family moved two houses down from me. This statement would hold no real significance if you didn't know where I lived. I live in a very conservative, very white suburb. This has caused me to roll my eyes, and have more than one shouting match with my family, who are a bit... racist. It boggles my mind, it angers me, it is just incomprehensible how someone can judge another by something so... pointless, as their ethnic background. But you know what annoys me slightly more? The thing that just makes me sigh? People living into stereotype.
Now let me make this perfectly clear, and the fact that I must make this statement annoys me. I am not talking about culture, my opinions on that little subject can wait. What I am talking about are people, of any race, living into their negative stereotype. Essentially, the people who justify the racist, the people who the racist point at and shout out to the world how right they were. The people who, to put it shortly, ruin it for everyone else.
Racism is a terrible thing, there are few things less worthy to be than a racist. But I can at least, if not understand, than see where it comes from. My family doesn't hate minorities, they interact with them the same as any other person, they're not out in front of out ethnic neighbor's yard with a burning cross, they simply carry with them unjust prejudice. It's something they grew up with, their parents, a society of segregation, taught my parents, who taught my older brother. The only reason I wasn't brought up the same way is because I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood. Their wrong, sure, but it wasn't born out of hate but ignorance and fear.
But I can't help but shake my head at people who do stupid things that play into the already preset mindset of people who are racist. Here we have a Latino family moving into a predominantly white town, they're already going to be watched with narrowed eyes. Now does this mean that these people should change themselves to fit someone's ideal? Of course not! There's no reason that anyone should change their ways for someone else.
But then simple courtesy should tell you not to have loud parties lasting till one in the morning...
As well it would be wise not to have loud arguments at six in the morning on a Sunday, brandishing a bat, in front of someone else's house. I watched and shook my head as this took place, watched as a cop rolled in, which was the only thing to put a stop to it. As I walked back upstairs when my curiosity abated, I heard my mother chide in about how they should 'Go back to New Brunswick.' I sighed, and while hating my mother's statement, hated how wrong it was to say, I couldn't help but think about how these people were justifying my families ignorance.
I'm not talking anyone who is Puerto Rican, or anyone Latin or remotely Spanish, I'm talking about a select few here. And isn't that whats at the basis of racism? Focusing on those few that do not, but end up, representing an entire people? Think about how many people bleated out that the only reason Barack Obama won was because of all the black people who only voted for him because he was black. It's an ignorant statement right? Yes, but... there are those few, that handful of black people, who did just that. Racism is something I hate, it's humanities weakness personified. It's ignorance and fear combined into one hate filled and sometimes dangerous emotional response. But what makes me boil over all the more is the people who do just as much to damage race relations as the racists themselves, they don't have the excuse of ignorance and fear. They're just... People.
Also with that logic, why didn't Al Sharpton win in 2004?
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