So this past week I was scrolling through my timeline on a late Tuesday afternoon, and I saw someone who posted on Facebook about how an African-American had said a racially insensitive comment towards her, an Asian American. In most cases, I am naturally inclined to dismiss and ignore things like this. But it got me thinking about how all the ways were we practice prejudice and discrimination against other people of color. Many times I disregard these issues of other people of color as not as important as my own. Growing up in the South, having 21 years of scarce interactions with other POC besides African-Americans has made me apathetic to the issues that are in their community.
In the African-American community and culture, we view other minorities Hispanic American, Asian American, Native American, etc. We call Hispanics, Mexicans. We call all Asians, Chinese or Japanese. We hyper sexualize their women, we call them racial slurs, we laugh at racially insensitive jokes about them, and we make up stereotypes about them. This is just as bad if not worse than when white people do it to our community. We should no better not to discriminate and hold prejudice in our hearts, because of all the things done to our ancestors up until to the present day. How can we continue to do these things and then proclaim to that we want justice and equality for all? Really you just want equality for black people, even though we have no benefit to discriminate to my fellow and prejudice others.
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I am here to say that I apologize to other POC communities for being complicit in the discrimination against you. I am sorry for ignoring your pain and believing that my pain is more than yours. I want to be better and will be better. I will fight against the jokes, the cultural appropriation, the hyper sexualization of your women, and your continued marginalization by society. I want to do better because people in your community stand with my community in solidarity against the unjust killings of unarmed African-Americans. There are people in your communities that it has happened to as well, and I will fight for you guys. Because if we want to fulfill the words of Martin Luther King Jr., then I as an African-American must see his words “an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere,” not just a nice quote to say, but something that I actually live by.
