Race

This week we discussed race and learned that race is, infact, not a biological thing. Race is something that our society has created. We've been born and raised to learn what classifies someone as African American, Asian, Indian, Hispanic and so on. There's nothing different about these people biologically compared to White people. But what is different, is their skin color and the way that they look, which is why society has created names for these various groups of people and has classified them by their traits, etc. Growing up, most African American or Hispanic people that I heard of were not good people. I was sort of trained to think that they were the criminals of society and that they were the people to fear. Nobody trained me to think this way, but from movies and the media, it's something that I realized our society thought of them so I didn't know any better. These people were highly associated with crime. If you saw dark skin, your immediate reaction was supposed to be oh, he or she is bad so be careful. While it is true that many dark skinned people make up the population of people in poverty and crime related incidents, it's not fair for society to make such generalizations. I work at Kona Grill and I'm a hostess there. Since I began, I've met many of the hispanics that work in the kitchen and bus tables. When I would walk through the kitchen, I would unconsciously walk at a rapid pace because I was suspicious of them. I never realized that I was doing this until they started whistling at me and I realized I was scared of them. As time went on, I started to get to know them and learned that they are harmless. Many of them have families and work full time jobs to support them. They are really good people that don't deserve to be discriminated against. This opened my eyes to how society has made me think about people that aren't white and how it's not right to judge them. The hispanics are no different than me. They just happen to have darker skin and different looking features. A bit crazy to think about, but they're really no different biologically.