We are all human beings, we may have different shades of color whether it may be brown, caramel, black or white we are all the same. I remember going to a meeting where there were all shades of races but instead of being together or mixed; each formed their own group with the same ethnic in each group, nobody different just all the same. I came into the meeting and realized how everyone was categorized by their ethnic groups but I decided to join any group. As I sat in this group I didn’t care if everyone seemed so much lighter than I was but others in the group did as they gave me funny looks or would even pretend I wasn’t even there. I knew why they were doing this but I didn’t let it bother me neither did I get up to join a group of  my ethnicity. I don’t see why its seen as such a big deal, why we are looked at as different when were really not. Society wants us to believe that we are all different and that its fine to just stay in our category but Its actually not because we are then just used to the same thing everyday when their are other cultures there to explore. Living in America all groups of ethnicity are all clammed together and there are many who dont mind blending in with other shades of people but there are also many who still do. The world is still a racist place but there are many things we can do ti change, even though it may seem impossible with having a soon to be racist president. If we come together we can make a change

The ugly little monster that always shows its
Face – Racism

It is no surprise that racism is still pretty prevelent in our society today. Everyone has a racist thought every now and again and some people are open with their racism. I’m positive you can think of one racist joke about every race. It is one of those problems in the world that will never get fixed, or a problem we might not be around to see get fixed. It surely isn’t as bad as it was about a century ago, but we do have more work to do. The other day a white head coach Phil Jackson was referring to an incident with basketball player Lebron James. He recalled that lebron wanted to break a set in stone rule and go hangout with his “posse”. The use of that word sparked an outrage and people were calling for Phil Jackson to apologize. Lebron James is the best basketball player in the world and has always carried himself professionally on and off the court. He found it very disrespectful that Phil Jackson would refer to his people as a posse. Lebron views the action as racist, since he believes Phil would not have used the word posse had he not been black. In other words Lebron is calling Phil a racist for his choice of words. I do agree with Lebron about Phil probably not using that word if he was white, but I can’t speak on the racism since Phil Jackson has not shown himself to be that way. Was posse the best word he could of chosen? What made him choose that word? Could it be envy? We may never know. This reminds me of a quote from Age, Race, Class and sex, it says ” Certainly there are very real differences between us of age, race and sex. But it is those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation”.

There isn’t a day that goes by that i done see some sort of poverty in NYC. Most of what I see occurs in the subway everyday. Almost everyday someone comes in the train and announces that they are homeless and would value anything you give them. But in a city where people are always on the move  and speed is always increasing there is not a lot of attention to the homeless. As well not everyone can afford to give money to every homeless person they see in the subway. With this recently concluded election, who knows what will be done to change the amount of poverty in the country. Mayor Bill De Blasio just over a year ago announced a plan to help reduce the poverty rate by raising the minimum wage to give everyone a chance but that faces difficulty as raising the minimum wage is a state decision. What I seem to notice most about the homeless is that, while New York is a very diverse city, most are either Hispanic or African American or Asian. I read a few months ago that just under fifty percent of New York’s population is homeless. That mean just under fifty percent in made up of those three ethnic groups. In all honesty those are pretty disheartening numbers. Most of the time on the train, i have my headphones in my ear but those times when i listen to them explain their situation, one thing reoccurs. They receive little to no help from the government. Somehow you have to acknowledge that the homeless seek help from society and its officials. As Audre Lorde says in Age, Race, Class, Sex: Women Redefining Difference, “change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals.(Lorde123)

Black men in The United States want to have white wives, or at least white looking wives, as Ifemelu said in her blog “Many successful American black men have white wives.”(Adichie 265) Maybe that’s the whole point, to be successful, to get somewhere in life. If they have whit wives or white looking wives, who can at least pass as a white female would be the reason of being more successful and black men would be more valued more in the society. They will be respected by cops, their children could attend good schools and not be harassed because of being black and would be safe. No one would degrade them or their children because they have a solid base to work with. Black women are always kept on the down low because they’re not considered pretty enough to be with in the public. Women look up to Barack Obama because he brought hope to these women to be considered pretty for whom they are. “He broke the mold!” Ifemelu mentioned (Adichie 265) “He married one of their own. He knows what the world does seem to know: that dark black women totally rock.” If black men only want to marry white women, what will happen to their own kind? Who will they get married to? Black men seem to be so focused on being successful, being out there and not being degraded, they become selfish and stop caring about their own society. But rather move on and step along with a different one, so they can escape from their the background they came from. Barack Obama saw differently, he knew he could make a difference by just marrying his own, to marry within the community/ society. To show people women are beautiful no matter what color they are, what shape they have, looks matter but brains matter more. To him education matters more, manners mattered more and that’s why so many black women like Obama. He showed that black men can be successful with black women standing by their side. Media is a source where it shown the importance of white women in America over black women. Black women are never the main character in any shows or movies. They’re always the negative character and are hidden and are always given the lowest roles to be acting in. All of this is an explanation of “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” By Audrie Lorde. “Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm… In America, this norm is usually defined as a white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secured.” (Lorde 116) This is what all these black men are trying to do. They’re trying to follow the norm, for the most part. To have a secure and successful future for themselves and their kids. I actually belong from Pakistan and people always mistake me as a Spanish or a Russian person. It doesn’t always go in a negative way. I am spoken Spanish to and am expected to reply in the same language. But I can’t close my eyes and say, yes I am Spanish or Russian or whatever people think I am just to fit in the norm and the society.

Let me ask you a question what do you believe is the best race in the world ? Okay let me follow that up with what sex is superior ? Why do we base each other on the color of our skin rather than on one’s character that we are. How come people believe that one sex is superior to the the other. Who decided that Jesus was White or not could he not be Spanish or Asian. Why stop there why couldn’t Santa Claus be a women. We seem to separate each other when it should be the opposite because only together can we survive. For what reason do we have to put our background on a exam paper in high school shouldn’t it just be our name and id number. Were too focused on separating each other to see the big picture. A world in which our children won’t pretend to be a different background to be accepted. Where it’s not a dream but a reality that a woman became president. Being White should not make you feel superior and being Black should not make you feel inferior and vise versa. The people of this country have just elected a man who believes that believes in that sort of thing and I quote “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”  First off how he won is clear the United States are full of people who think or in other words don’t think that believe that based on someone background they are terrible and judge the actions and results of some against an entire group which is just plain wrong. Lorde’s “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference is a perfect example in which it writes “The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions.” Donald Trump and other like him are able to get away with saying stuff like this due to their status as not only being White but as being a male too. So I leave you with this what is the greatest race, I say the human race. It’s the only race that will hopefully be here in the next 100 years if we’re lucky enough to survive the next 4.

I was still new here, new to the U.S. I definitely was struggling with all of the social nuances that are second nature where you grew up but are definitely lacking in a foreign country. Me and a friend from “back home” were a bit tired of staying in the apartment and decided to chill on the parkway (Eastern Parkway) near the train station. The expectation was as we do home, relax in the open as we observe the other people of the neighborhood. We selected benches near one of the entrances of the train station and commenced to have conversation. We soon noticed that there was a uniformed police strolling on the parkway and walking in our direction. Initially we just ignored it. Coming from Barbados, encounters with the police, even in strained situations are mainly casual. It did not take long for me and my friend to come to the conclusion that the officer seemed to taking a special interest in us. He was by the way black. So my friend and I began to debate between ourselves, what he could possibly be thinking. We went form such positive thoughts as, he is thinking those guys look so relax if he was not in uniform he would come over and join us, to the negative, maybe those guys (my friend and I ) are criminals and just sitting, deciding on who should be there next victim of the night. As most of the thoughts were absurd we were having a merry time laughing. To further exacerbate the situation and ignoring his “authority” over us, we two precocious early twenties, black men found ourselves engaged in a virtual stare down, which to us was very humorous.
As fortune would have it, it was not too long before he was joined by his white partner. This seemed to embolden the young, black cop. He looked no more than twenty eight to us. After a brief conversation with his newly arrived partner, a conversation we can only speculate on, he approached our position and not with the body language of relaxation and openness. He in as calm an unstrained voice as he could muster, said good night and proceeded to ask, and I paraphrase, what are we doing here. With mischief still in our minds and having no real fear of police and still fresh from being teenagers we playfully replied, “What do you think we are doing?” This was not met with amusement. I could see his body stiffened, reflected in the change of his gaze. The conversation soon became a mental joust, with him trying to remain calm but obviously being flustered by our answers and our responses. Eventually I grew tired and just told him point blank, “You are black in your own neighbourhood, see two young black men sitting on a bench. Instead of coming over and having a casual conversation you chose to engage in a staring match although you are obviously the authority figure. To make matters worse, you waited until your “white partner” showed up before you confronted us. What are you afraid of? What is that about”. I believe the boldness of our actions and words threw him off guard, he relaxed and somewhat ashamedly asked us to have a good night and not to loiter too long outside the train station.
I came away thinking, it is loitering to relax in your own neighborhood in the view of the general public on a busy thoroughfare! How easily it was for him to reduce us to the binary of black/non-white, and likely criminal. Is this that racist America we had heard rumored and warned about by countless family members and other friends who resided here much longer than us two? Are we even assumed criminals in our own neighborhood by our own kind? Was it not Audrey Lorde in her novel Age, Race, Class and Sex:Women Redefining Difference who chided us about the fallacy of using lazy binaries to categorize individuals!

As of late their seems to be more talk than usual regarding another person race or religion. This may be because of the new presidential elect Donald Trump. Throughout his election campaign Donal Trump has said some very racist things. Now if a normal person has said some of the things that Trump has said he would automatically be labeled a racist, however some people still don’t understand how Trump is being racist.

Trump has made some racist statements regarding specific races such as Mexicans. I feel as though Trumps racist comments have sparked more people to think that its okay to make Racist comments. An example I can think of this is that I was at work recently, I was a supervisor in a grocery store and a customer decided to verbally attack one of the cashiers. The customer felt that since the cashier them an attitude they had a right to tell them that “they couldn’t wait for Trump to become president and take care of her” I don’t think that it is ever appropriate to say something like that to a person. Just because some looks a certain way or has an accent doesn’t mean that they are a certain ethnicity. Not all Spanish people are the same, they don’t all come from the same country. Not all black people are the same or come from the same country.

People continue to pretend that race is not a major factor in day to day life. How can that be true when their is a racist president? When some races still feel superior to other? When others feel they can make a threat to another human being just because of their race? The more you look into it the more you may see some of the current hate crimes of people of certain races or religions may have come from the recent presidential’s own actions and the influences that he has on others.

In America, well throughout the world, Muslim women are being judged based on appearance every second of their lives. An issue yet to be discovered which impacts strongly towards many adolescence girls. Muslim girls and even women are criticized by family members and most importantly men if they do not wish to cover the beautifully work of art crafted from God, which we call hair. A women’s sexuality is not discovered just in the presence of hair, the hijab may be a symbolism for purity but that doesn’t make the rest of us devil worshiping beings. In other words, Hijab wearing women are not all angels just like, non-hijab wearing women are not all evil. If an adolescence girl has to think twice about her faith, and is called “loose” for choosing to flaunt her hair, maybe it’s you, who need the help of God. Everyone grows hair. Women just happen to look appealing with hair, so snotty men please don’t be fooled. Why make her feel less pure for wanting to feel a little breeze eh? Adolescence girls are being corrupted with this ideology of pure and not the real intentions behind it. Therefore, I will always choose to show my hair in a room full of hijab wearing women. Besides, haven’t you ever herd of the saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover?’ To refer back to the article, “Wollstonecraft-A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” written by Vincent, states, “Women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue. Yet it should seem, allowing them to have souls, that there is but one way appointed by providence to lead mankind to either virtue or happiness…Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.” So with that being said, ladies the next time you decide to wear a hijab, ask yourself this question, who am I doing this for? Myself, or my society?

In America, we are all black, does not matter if you are black American, Haitian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, except if you are from India.They are called Indian, even though some are darker. There needs to be a stop to that “hierarchy” within the black communities,especially in the Caribbean communities. We are all black, coming to America for a better opportunity. then, we get caught up in making ourselves feel better by bringing others down. We see Haitians and Jamaicans getting offended when mistaken for the other. Some Jamaican in their mistaken believe they are better because they flew to America while believing all Haitians came in a boat illegally. That’s not true. My first time in a airplane was when I came to America. In high school, you see them fighting each other over nonsense. What the Jamaicans forget is that Haiti helped them gaining their independence after Haiti gained its independence. The media portray Haiti as the poorest country in the hemisphere while forgetting it was the first black country to gain its independence and had helped many others to gain theirs. This game of who’s better is what the ones in power wants to keep us divided. We seem to forget that others are already treating us badly, therefore there is no need to tear each other up. We, immigrants, need to stick together and lift each other up. Together we are stronger than divide and divided we fall; they know that that is why they want us divided.We need to stop and come together to fight this oppression.