Who’s Superior Again?

Growing up my mom was around a lot of racial slurs and for right now, half of her life,  she truly didn’t know that they were bad.  There were some nursery rhyme songs that had a lot of that type of language and she’d sing them to us not even realizing they were bad.  It wasn’t until my brother and I started school and came home saying, “Mommy, you can’t say that!” That she was like, “Why?”  We told her they were bad words.  But then again it wasn’t until she was in high school that she learned the “black” kids down the street weren’t just extra dark Natives.

This, of course, led me to think about how every race that is part of the United States has over come some sort of hardship just to be here.  I used to get angry when people would talk about the holocaust and slavery and people would sympathize and be like, “Oh, poor you!”  But when talk of Natives and everything that was done came up, people would be like, “Well the government gave you land.”  I would just roll my eyes because I knew they seemed to think that on reservations there were rainbows, magic and unicorns.  You know, I never brought it up to be pitied but really to have something to talk about since others were talking about things similar to what I had to say.  One of the things that I think is really rude is to feel sorry for someone, mostly when they don’t feel sorry for themselves.

The truth is, Europeans escaped oppression, Natives dealt with oppression and genocide, Africans Americans dealt with slavery and the KKK or people like it, Jews dealt with oppression and genocide, Asians went to American concentration camps (I won’t believe that it was only Japanese that went), Middle Eastern people, including anyone who’s not from the Middle East but “look” like it, are suspected of anything that smells like foul play, Hispanics while not being killed off are oppressed in the fact that most people expect them to “take all the jobs,” yeah the minimum wage jobs or own a Mexican restaurant.  Of course there are Hispanics who do well for themselves but really most people expect them to bring you, your order at McDonalds.  Many other races that have been here for a very long time were of course part of the “colored” population and saw oppression that way because really just about all “colored” people are the same, right?

At the end of the day I just have to remind my self that people who think they are better for what they have, what they’ve been through, or whatever hardships have fallen on them, are just part of the great list that make the world go round.  Nothing will change it and there will never be total and complete world peace but just think how boring it would be if there wasn’t a cause to fight for.