“Aren’t you embarrassed to be white?”

As a white person growing up in the heart of Los Angeles, I find myself to be the minority in most situations. At my job and in school, I am usually one of very few white people and it has been like that since I was a kid. Honestly, I love it. My mom was a recovering speed addict when I was growing up, and as hard as she worked, me and my brothers usually ended up living in not-so-great neighborhoods and attending the local public schools. But I feel so blessed to be exposed to races other than my own, to live with them, love them, work with them and so on. It’s a view that I think many white people in this country don’t get. Ignorance breeds hate and I have seen my friends and my family experience horrible prejudice, mainly because people don’t want to or care to understand someone else’s life, and what they have been through.

But very recently in my life, I have felt a shift. With the Black Lives Matter movement, Donald Trump running for President and things along these lines, they have caused a great hate for white people in the recent media. Understandably so, the atrocities that have occurred to people of color even in recent years, have caused even me a lot of horror. There’s people I love being so deeply affect by the hate that Donald Trump is spreading on a daily basis, but never have I been lumped in with someone like that until very recently. I experienced a taste of the prejudice that my friends and family experience all the time. People painting you with a broad bush, and not considering you as an individual, only considering your race. My boyfiend and I were watching a video on YouTube about a Trump rally gone south. 99% of the people who attended were white people and they were assaulting and harassing the other 1%. It was horrible to watch but as it ends, my boyfriend looks at me and says, “Doesn’t this make you embarrassed to be white?” At first I kind of laughed and then I realized that he was serious. He was actually lumping me in with these people! My boyfriend is a good, hardworking, salt of the earth kind of man. Kind in so many ways but says the first thing that comes to his mind, no filter at all. So I don’t think he was trying to be racist, I think he just thought he would be embarrassed if it was a Latino up there saying stuff like that and doing those things. He is of Mexican and Cuban decent.

I mean, yeah, the things that this horrible lump of hair says and does are completely rediculous, and filled with hate. But I have nothing to do with him and those people! They should be ashamed of themselves. And I was deeply offended to be lumped in with this group of people. But that is the type of prejudice my boyiend and others experience daily. So as much as it offended me, it was also very humbling. I was able to take it in and also use it as teaching moment with my boyfriend. I told him that I am not those people and I never would be, yes they are white but not all white people are the same just like not all Latinos are or African Americans. And that he was treating me in a similar way that those who are prejudice against him do. Luckily he understood and agreed, but I think it is something we all need to remember. I may look like I grew up with money, with a picture perfect family or in a house with a white picket fence, because I am white. But it was actually quite the opposite. Everyone is different, everyone is important and everyone deserves to be treated as an individual and with respect.

So many horrible injustices are committed daily but we need to come together. Stand together as humans against the government, big business and those trying to take advantage of us. They use race, gender, class, etc. To pit us against each other. To distract us from the real crimes being committed against us by those in power. They pit us against each other for crumbs while they run off with the whole cake! My boyfriend had his moment but he learned and I hope we can all continue to do the same. Just try to listen to and learn from each other, and rise above the unnessecay hate.