racism

This week we talked about racism, and how even though we may not think so, it is apparent everywhere. Being Japanese, I have been a victim of racism and I'm sure I will experience acts of racism in the future. I remember when I was in elementary school this one boy used to call me "chink" all the time. When I was that young I didn't even know what that meant. What the heck was a "chink"? I later found out that it was a name made up for Chinese people. That was the first time I had experienced something like that. The funny thing is, I'm not even Chinese! It's crazy to think how people are actually taught to hate other people just because they may look different. In history classes we talk about different topics, like slavery or the civil rights movement and I know a lot of us think, "wow, how could people have been so racist like that back then?". But what people don't realize is that our society is still racist. We may not want to think so, but we can see racist acts everywhere. I think that stereotyping also goes into the same category as racism. When you're a certain race or ethnicity, people expect you to act the way they think "your" people would act. Isn't that wrong? In class we talked about how when you meet a person, one of the first things you notice is his or her race. I know that when I meet people and then get to know them, I hear things like, "you're not asian at all!" or, "you're the whitest asian I've ever met!" Like, what does that even mean? I feel like we've grown up to believe that racism hardly exists anymore when it's really everywhere.