This I Believe

Growing up in City Heights exposed me to a myriad of different cultures and ethnicities. I was lucky enough to be raised in the most diverse community in California. My mother brought me here from Mexico eleven months after my birth. Immigration was how most of the people in City Heights arrived. Almost all of the students in my schools from kindergarten to my senior year were immigrants, refugees, or first generation born Americans. Everyone looked different than me, had different sounding names, and spoke different languages, but I believe we are all the same.

I believe there truly is no such thing as race. The color of our skin is caused by the amount of sunlight our ancestors were exposed to on different parts of the planet. The idea of races was created by us to categorize each other and even establish a hierarchy. We are psychologically hardwired to look for patterns in nature. In this case, that pattern would be the color of our skin. Differences in the way we speak, act, and look don’t make any of us less human than someone else.

Our generations are becoming more tolerant and aware of the different ethnicities around them. Children aren’t born racist, but they aren’t born with knowledge of the world around them either. It is our job to educate them on the different cultures around them. We can’t make them colorblind due to the unconscious need to look for patterns such as skin color. We can help children understand that although someone looks completely different from them, that person is still equally human.

We can break so many walls if we continue educating our future generations on the ultimate similarity between humans and that is the plain fact that we are all biologically the same. The only real differences are caused by the environment we were raised in. Imagine a world where racism was a thing of the past, where it only existed in the history books. That’s the kind of world I believe we should create for our future. It all starts with a good education and exposure to the real world.