No one is born a racist. We don’t come out the womb hating one skin color over another. Racism is taught. People learn racism by the words and actions that they are surrounded by. Luckily for me, I was raised in a home and community where racism was never a major issue. I was raised in Houston, the most culturally diverse city in America, and growing up I honestly thought that racism no longer existed. In my schools, I was surrounded by friends of all different colors, backgrounds, and religions. We were all very aware of our differences but there was never any animosity towards a certain culture by another. We were able to joke about stereotypes and intermix between race boundaries freely. Racism was just a thing that we heard about in history books or that happened in the backwoods of Alabama or somewhere, but it wasn’t here, it was never close to home.

My perfect little racism free bubble was popped when I moved to Idaho for school. Here I was, surrounded by an all-new crowd, where diversity was limited and most people here have been surrounded by people who share their own religion, views, and culture their whole life. These were not mean or cruel people. In fact, they are some of the nicest people that I have ever known. But here, I hear things that make my skin crawl, things that I didn’t think people still said or believed, things that wouldn’t dare have been said back at home. There are people here who claim not to be racist but say things like:

“Ew, why would anyone ever date her? She’s black.”

Or

“I can say Ni**er if I want. I played basketball with black people, I’m not a racist.”

Or

“If they want to come to our country they need to assimilate to our culture. We are a white, Christian nation. If they don’t like it, then they should leave.”

And then when I confront these people and call them out for their racist remarks, I always get the same responses:

“I’m not racist, I have black friends. Black people love me.”

Or

“What? You can’t tell me that’s not true. It’s not racist if it’s true.”

It’s so hard for me not to get mad and make a scene. It just doesn’t make sense to me how someone can possibly think that words like this are okay. It doesn’t make sense to me how some of my friends here wouldn’t dare date someone of another race because they know their parents would get upset. I’m confused how someone can make judgments and generalizations about an entire religion just based off of things they see on the news. I try to tell myself that these people aren’t cruel people, that most of them are just ignorant. They haven’t been blessed to be exposed to so many other cultures and people like I have. But it also feels so wrong for me to make excuses for them as well. And so I sit back and I do what I can. I thank God that I was raised in the city that I was, and grew up with the friends that I did, and with the family that I have. I am so blessed to have been taught love and acceptance, and I will take the things that I have learned and I will do my best to spread them.

I’m not a major celebrity or human rights activist, but maybe by the things that I say, or by the example of my actions, or maybe even by writing this article I can make even one person think twice about how they treat others. And if I do that, maybe that will make all the difference.