September 4, 2016 - 16:58
Jasmine Stanton
September 4th, 2016
ESem Section 019
4598405
Humans, in the most recent century, have made considerable gains in areas such as technology, science, and medicine, reaching levels of intelligence that were unperceivable to our ancestors. However, as we have made these gains, we’ve fallen behind in understanding each other as people, as individuals. This has ultimately left us ignorant as antiquated ideas of people based solely on appearances or background inhibit us from understanding the peoples true identity and acknowledging our similarities. We still look at one another and make judgments about each other based on preconceived notions past down for generations. Our way of identifying each other has come down to superficial traits and characteristics such as race, gender, religion, and class, that are only components of our identity. One must also take into count that experiences and circumstances also contribute to who we are as people. It is when people realize that we all have lived through similar experiences and who we are is not limited to physical appearances that a common understanding will be formed and prejudices will begin to disappear.
As a person of color raised in a majority white suburb, there was never a time when my race wasn’t brought to my attention as an “issue”. Even when I was in preschool I was made known that I was different in some way and that was somehow wrong and I was out of place. Why is your skin like that? Why is your hair like that? My mom says black people are… But as I grew up and was able to have deeper conversations about race with my parents, I realized that there was nothing actually wrong with me. I realized that prejudices, passed down from generations, ultimately left the people around me ignorant and blind, creating divisions.
I remember in middle school I had a Taiwanese/ Chinese friend that I had gotten really close to. I met her through my ballet class. I asked her why I could never come to her house and why she could not come to mine. She told me it was because her mother thought if a black person came over they might try to stab her while playing. I have countless other experiences like this and I was baffled as to how people can have such outrageous views on a group of people when no one person is alike.
But after only a few years, me and this girl became great friends and her mother loves me. I have learned to forgive. The comments she would make would hurt but I knew her views were solely based on what her parents may have told her or what the black person is portrayed as in the media. She was a great friend when she wasn’t making racist comments, if that is even fathomable. I began to speak up and tell her when her comments were wrong our hurtful and why they were that. She began to understand. One day recently, she came to me and apologized but she thanked me for bringing her to the realization that there is no one type of person based on race. She reflected on how she feels when others make racist comments to her. As minorities, we came to an understanding. As girls, we came to an understanding. As ballet dancers. As individuals. As humans. We acknowledged our differences and realized they were literally skin deep and our many similarities is what brought us together.
After about two years of knowing her, I was finally invited to her house. It was for her birthday, and we all joined in in making dumplings. Somehow I ended up sitting next to her father as her mother passed us ingredients from the kitchen. I talked with him for an hour as we made dumpling. He taught me his technique in crafting dumplings and he talked about his travels. He then asked me what country I was from in Africa. I told him I didn’t know. That my ancestors were slaves and our records were destroyed so there is no way of tracing my ancestry past a plantation in Alabama. The look on his face is hard to describe. I can tell his mind went everywhere. He said he could not imagine his life without having such strong ties to his native country and he pitied me. I told him it is okay though because my ancestors made their own heritage here in America, full of practices and values that have been passed down to me. We from there come to an understanding. We understood each other’s values, or love for family and history.
I imagine when he was told an African American girl was coming to his home, he had some sort of image in his mind and I hope to believe I squashed that image. My friends mother and father approve of me as a friend to say the least and also are friends with my parents. I can connect this story to a quote from June Jordan’s “Report from the Bahamas”, “much organizational grief could be avoided if people understood that partnership in misery does not necessarily provide for partnership for change”. How I interpreted this was that it is good to acknowledge people’s grief but there can not be healing if people don’t reflect on other’s grief as their own. I imagine my friend and her parent vaguely knew of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, etc. as I vaguely knew of their struggles as immigrants. But through conversations there was a better understanding of the lasting impacts of those struggles. I think this is something all people of differences need to reflect on as we all share the similarity of a struggle.
I can’t say my image of myself was changed from this experience as again I have had several experiences surrounding my race and I long ago learned that stereotypes didn’t actually reflect who I was. What I did learn is that these stereotypes and prejudices only exist because of ignorance and can be erased through enlightenment and reflection. Jordan’s helped me better understand how racism is not always hateful but often ignorance. People are consumed by their own circumstances and don’t realize the person next to them may be experiencing similar struggles only they have different skin or a different background. It will never be at peace if we continue to judge each other based on traits and prejudices and Jordan discovered. There is no one story. As individuals we are made up of many stories and experiences that greatly shape us. In my case a lot of my identity comes from my race in that I’ve experienced so many things that shaped my identity today, how I view myself, my self worth, and my love of my heritage. What Jordan does for all of us is challenge us to look at everyone we meet on a day to day bases and realize though we may seem like we’re from very different worlds, we often share more similarities than differences. Acknowledge each other’s struggles and learn from them to create a connection stronger than our differences.