Representing Your Entire Race
I’ve noticed something about myself, and I’m fairly confident that I’m not the only one who does this. When I’m in a situation where I’m the only person of my race or color skin, I act as though I’m the representative of my race and try extra hard to make a good impression.
I think a part of me is hoping that they will go home and tell someone of their own race “hey, today I met a really nice ::insert race:: guy today!” That way if they had any negative feelings towards my race, they might rethink their prejudices.
In doing this, I’m helping to bridge the gap between our cultures and pushing humanity one step closer to ridding itself of racism…
A small step…
Well, probably not even a step at all. Really this is all just a self-justification of my silly behavior.
The fact that I even catch myself behaving this way only serves as evidence that there are still cultural barriers between races, and although we may not want to feel this way, we become very aware of our own race when around people of another race.
I can only hope that within my lifetime, a generation will be brought up thinking of race as simply a variety of human beings and not a force of division. I hope that when they’re around people of another race, they will feel completely comfortable, and act as they would with anyone else. And I hope that by that time, this article will be viewed by that generation as strictly historical, foreign, and hard to believe.
3 years ago