Claudia+CS’s+2018+OpEd+Article

=Immigrants and Racism =

There are many things I don’t understand. Why do people who chew loud have to exist? Trigonometry, but math, in general, doesn’t make sense to me. But the main thing that I don’t understand is why people are racist? How small is your brain, that you don’t have the capacity to understand the word equality? Equality is defined (by a simple and easy Google search) “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities”. I’ll repeat it again, the state of being equal, being the same regardless of skin color, religion, or sex, we are all equal people. Why should these things matter anyway? We are all people trying to succeed in life,  we are all people living in the same country, we are all people.

As someone who has experienced racism, it’s not fun. And I’m sure that there are people out there have experienced much much more worse. Racial slurs are not only insulting, they are also dehumanizing. You would also feel like shit, if a random person who has absolutly no idea what you go through tell you “go back to Mexico” or to “speak English we’re in America”. As insulting as people can be. I simply don’’t understand why racist people are racist. Who raised you and told you people of color, immigrants or anyone different from you are bad? Yeah our country’s deep hatred toward anyone not American goes back about 200 years, but open your eyes people it’s the 21 century and the world has changed. Our country was built by immigrants for immigrants. = = What most people don’t actually realize, is that life is hard for immigrants. Most immigrants don’t live in big houses or have boats, they work their ass off to live in that small house in the side of town you’ve never gone to. Most immigrants are not criminals, are not rapists. They are good-hearted people, simply trying to better their lives. Most pay taxes, they don’t live off the governments' money, if any of you even think that’s remotely possible. They risk their lives getting jobs to feed their children. Just like any average American would do.

Growing up in a family of immigrants. I have seen the struggle, the problems, the difficulties my family goes through to simply stay in this country. Ventura is not very diverse. Going to school with mainly white people, I felt different, I felt like I didn’t fit. Yeah I had some friends who were in the same boat as me but it wasn’t the same. Whenever I would go to one of my white friends' houses, I would see how different their lives were from mine. They had had family in Ventura for years, while I had no one. They had family friends and had known each other since birth, while I had no one. It was tiny things like these that made me feel like an outcast. There was only a handful of people I could talk to about these things, and it made me feel distant and apart from everyone else growing up.

My point here is, please don’t discriminate people due to their skin color, or because of anything. Immigrants lives are hard enough and if you add racism,it makes life more difficult. Time has passed and the world has changed, open your mind and just try to understand that immigrants are people too, with hopes, dreams, and aspirations.