While trying to find some sort of inspiration for this Blog post, I started to read some of the posts of my peers. I found a few things to be true:

1. Many of their articles focused on racial hatred.
2. Many people considered themselves to be a victim.
3. Everyone followed the crowd.

So I decided to do the opposite and show what the crowd isn’t showing you. I found it extremely interesting to find so many Asian Americans claiming to be a minority in our school. Let’s face the facts though. A simple google search can show that 55.8% of our school’s population is Asian, while only 21.7% of our student body is white. 

I want to make it explicitly clear that I understand that for most of history and still in most places around the world Asians have been a minority and have been discriminated against. I also understand that much of that has been caused by the actions of people from white European descent. I am also not claiming that people are faking it or victimizing themselves. BUT we cannot pretend that just because others have experienced hate for being a certain race, we can relate or have experienced the same thing.

I believe that we have come so far when it comes to ending racism and hate. Today most of the racism you see comes from people who are very clearly not in their right mind or who are very idiotic or from jokes that do not actually show the way the comedian feels about the subject. We have made huge improvements and will continue to make improvements but by claiming to be victims and punishing people for the acts of people of their same race, we are going backwards. If we do not find a way to let go of the past while still learning from our mistakes we will get nowhere. I think the narrator in They Called Us Enemy shows a great example of how to do this. He remembers and shares his story without blaming all white Americans or staying angry. Another good example of this is Isamu Naguchi. He, like the narrator in They Called Us Enemy, has experienced hate and used it to grow but he has let go of the past and moved past it.  We still have far to go but we cannot use past events to determine our future. We must learn from the past but it cannot decide our future.

We need to stand together to be sure that racism and hate can be eradicated in our society. But this goes both ways. Racism against white people in response to the hate other white people have shown is still racism. It is no different than blaming Japanese Americans for the acts of the country of Japan. We must learn from the past but also let go of it.