Just a thought

Today I was in class, I thought it would be appropriate to speak with my fellow classmates. Be social like our universities want. I immediately regretted that decision after making conversation with a boy in my class. Getting back to my previous post, I also think ignorance is a problem in our society. Ignorance of being open-minded to others, ignorant of learning and adapting. I see this a major problem; from my own view point you cannot judge another culture that you do not know about. Mind you, now if you do not want to hear me rant about my own views please click away. I do not want to offend anyone and I am doing this solely as a way to vent.

 I myself am very open minded and liberal to many topics, which I can tell can and will piss off a person of conservative values. The boy I spoke with today told me how the Black Lives Matter movement is causing more violence and killed people more than the KKK. I did not mean to communicate politics with this kid, all I wanted to say was hello and I was greeted with that.

Comparing the Black Lives Matter group and the Ku Klux Klan was a really bold thing to say, especially in a class filled with various amount of races, includes those of Latino and African descents. None of which spoke up to this kid, who I can say did damage my eardrums with his voice. The Black Lives Matter group is relatively new to the organized group movement as far as I can remember; I couldn’t find any statistics showing members of the movement killing people, not as much as the KKK. Whereas our history is filled with white on black killings predominately in the South, being lynched and killed. I myself didn’t want to start a political debate in class, let him go on about what he knows, while he read news articles on Reddit. 

Many believe the Black Lives Matter group is also a racist group, like the KKK. I have no idea where this perception came from. I feel as though the Black Lives Matter movement is a group of minorities who are trying to put emphasis that they matter AS WELL, not more than another. Why is it racist when a group of black people march down the street and scream to considered equal to a race that has always been dominant in America. I see it as people who are trying to gain a seat the table of America that was predominately white. Trying to break the whites’ supremacy is scary to those who have survived and lived on the supremacy and they see the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat. Does anyone remember the Tulsa Race Riots that occurred in 1921? No? Well a group of whites, went to a wealthy black community and burned the city down, leaving over 10,000 black homeless and killed between 30-500 people, the exact number is unknown. The reason, they suspected a black man attacked a white woman on an elevator. The uproar happened because of the thought of a white woman being touched by a black man. The thought of a black man touching a white woman caused a section of the city to burn down. When the people believed the blacks in the community started firing back, WWI pilots fired and dropped bombs on the neighborhood. Why don’t we talk about that in our history book? Why do we look at the riots of the Black Lives Matter group as a negative when they are screaming their voices of frustration. 

People also claim the Black Lives Matter is anti-police, why?

Police are people, there are many men and women who are of African and Latino descent who are also police. The Black Lives Matter group is not anti-police; I believe they are anti-militarization of the police, as am I. As well as being against police brutality, the best example is the beating of Rodney King. As a person who had a very rough childhood, the police to me never seemed like the heroes. I have seen police point guns at my family’s home while I am outside playing, I have seen them come into my house and kick my bed and ask to flip it while I was sleeping on it, I have seen police call themselves crackers, those who whipped the slaves, as a form of intimidation to my friends of African descent. I never saw the police as heroes, I always saw them as a bully to people of my economic standpoint.

Don’t get me wrong, not every police officer is like that. I had friend who became police officers as well as befriended police officers as well. But should they be given military assault rifles and tanks as they perform their lines of duty, I don’t believe so. Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I always seen a gun around me whether it was my parent’s own legally obtained or a cop’s gun pointed at me. I have no fear of guns; I don’t believe every child in America should have this perception of a deadly weapon, there should be some cautious feeling towards the weapon of such power.

Now, many police stations are coming into military assault rifles and even tanks. I remember going to a seminar about militarization of police, and they mentioned something along those lines. How these men and women in the police do not know how wield such weapons of power. Regardless of the training of those weapons, as American do you really want to see police use such excessive weaponry here? Tanks rolling down the street, cops pointing AK rifles at people, I didn’t know we were war stricken country. I see weapons and tanks like that in societies where war is present, like Syria. Do you as a person want to give children the idea that war will erupt in this country?

The boy in my class went on to discuss how those of Muslim religions should stay in their own countries and we should leave the Middle East. I agree to the last part of his saying, we should have pulled out of the Middle East, but we are too late now. We are in too deep now to leave, if we do we let the terror group get what they want over in the Middle East. I do not agree on restricting immigrants from coming to America based off their religion. Being a country founded of the freedom of religion, not just the Christian religion, I believe everyone should have an attempt of the pursuit of happiness here in America. Maybe exercise caution to those who do come from war stricken countries, but not have a ban on Muslims and bug the Mosques that are presently here. Majority of those who are Muslim and live here in America are westernized, not everyone has the extremist views as those in ISIS. Hell ISIS isn’t even following the Islamic followings; they are killing other Muslims, there are constant violence breaking out in places like Bangladesh and Baghdad. They even attacked during one of the Islamic holidays.

But not everyone looks at things the way I do. I am one person and not everyone thinks like me, I respect that. I don’t push my own thoughts onto a person. I explain myself for my reason of thinking, mainly because everyone deserves a reason why. He didn’t give me a reason for his way of thinking, just that “It’s true.” Then again I shouldn’t hate on the kid for not knowing, or just repeated thing he heard on certain biased media, maybe if we taught more of the struggles, not just of white America, but everyone in America, we would be more open and understanding of others. Just showing empathy can go a long way. 

Just a thought. 

Love

I apologize for not writing any sooner. I have been busy with school and work. I was shocked at the series of violence that has been going on in the world over the past week.

I pray to the victims to the series of attacks that has taken place in Germany. The shooting in Munich, the suicide bombing attack in Ansbach, and the machete attack in Reutlingen. The attacks to be seem more and more prominent in Europe. As well as the Middle East, I heard news of the attack in Baghdad. ISIS is not a group of love, it promotes hate and is turning people against one another.

We should stand together as one to stand up for what is right, the human rights. The unwritten rule on what should be okay to do and what is not okay to do.

It was not right for slaves to be captured and sent to a country to be a slave, it was not right for Hitler to kill the Jews in the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide was not right, the Rwanda Genocide was not right. I ask why did these things happen?

What made these people turn against one another and make them attack the other group. I believe the answer is fear. (Mind you I am not a professional, this is my own opinion, this blog is purely opinionated.) The fear of loosing what someone believes what is "rightfully" their own, like land or race.

That is how wars have started, and ended bloody. World Wars and Civil Wars.

Let us as people keep the peace, racism isn't necessary. We are all one people. We are not one of several races but of one race, the human race.

Whether you are black, white, Asian, mixed, Caribbean, Hispanic, West Indian, African, Australian, gay, straight, bi-sexual, transsexual, identify as a different gender than you are born, etc. We should not look at our differences as a negative but as a positive because no one is the same,

"One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right" - Bob Marley, One Love.

Being the stranger

While reading James Baldwin’s, Stranger in the Village, I felt not only the urge to travel but a sense of empathy towards his story. I understand the feeling of being looked at like you don’t belong. When I was about seven years old, my family and I went on a road trip to a family’s farm in Ocala. Not a beautiful Swiss village like the author experienced, but I experienced the farmlands in Florida. If one has ever been to Ocala, they know some parts of it are very widespread, very country like as far as landscape goes. What Baldwin felt was a strong feeling of dis-attachment to his surrounding area. I felt the same thing, but I was only seven when I felt it, not as an adult. One morning in Ocala, my dad wanted to grab some breakfast at a Dunkin Donuts that we saw the night prior. When my parents, baby sister and I stepped foot into that Dunkin Donuts you can hear a fly fart. The entire Dunkin Donuts lobby was silent, everyone stopped talking and just stared at us. No one moved their eyes from us when we approached the front counter, even a little boy, same age as me at the time, was looking at me like I wasn’t a little girl. I wonder how he saw me, I often wondered how he mentally contrasted us in his young mind. In Baldwin’s article the children ran down the road, calling him a “neger” but they didn’t know better. No one told them it wasn’t polite. Then again no one told the people in the lobby that staring was not polite either. Being only seven years old, I had a problem with not thinking before speaking; I looked at my dad and said loud enough for those to hear “Daddy, why are they staring at us like that?” I believe that snapped everyone into reality because the full lobby of people resumed talking amongst themselves. My dad didn’t say a word to me inside the Dunkin Donuts but when once we left he merely said they were staring because we are different. Now down here in South Florida, I have always been told because of my fair skin complexion no one would ever realize that I am a West Indian and Hispanic mix, most assume I’m just Hispanic, sometimes mistaken as white. When I was in Ocala I feel like those people saw all the minority in me and judged me for it. My father felt the same way Baldwin did in the article, a sense of anger for being looked at differently. My dad said never wanted me to feel racism because of the way I look because he had to go through the same things when he first came to this country from Trinidad. I remember speaking with a student in high school, whose ancestors were American to the bone whereas I am the first U.S born citizen in my family; he told me in his eyes I’ll never be white or considered full American because of where my ancestors hail from and what my mixed cousins look like. At first that offended me but most,not all, white people I have met in my life has proven to me that they hold a piece of racism in them. With either slick comments about me eating rice and beans, black jokes that are out of line, calling indian people terrorist, referencing my family to the Spanish requisition, asking if Trinidad a Spanish country, or assuming my dad or I speak Spanish. I felt the tension in that restaurant and so did Baldwin when he would walk the streets of the Swiss village, we both felt like outsiders. But he was an outsider in a foreign country, I was an outsider in my own home state, in my own country.