Truth Seeker-

Submitted by Azra Mirmohamed (United States), Nov 3, 2008 at 21:49

I know alot more about the other side than you might understand. I grew up in America and went to several ALL WHITE schools. When I refer to white, I refer mostly to White Americans. I have years of experience in blacks having a negative point under whites.

My skin is very light and I do not look black, but Indian more so. I first hand know the reality of White Americans (not all of course) who prodominitley appear to think that if people of color were more like them they would be better off, do better, and be a better (more civilized as they've stated) people. My life growing up in these communities made it very clear that people of color, especially black people, were not accepted for there differences, the only acceptance I noticed was when they took on the identity of white culture (or lack there of). I witnessed people in my family who avoided who they were to fit in, and I didn't do that. I had no desire to fit in with White America and there idea of what would make me acceptable in their eyes. I especially had little interest in taking on their identity as my own due to a strong lack of morality in my caucasian peers amongst their ways of life I witnessed that deeply bothered me (beyond lures of money). I enjoyed my being different and found it very disturbing that the world around me idolized people who were white and sidity, so to speak. Again this doesn't include all white people. As I grew up I seen the world differently, but, I have noticed that some things never change.

When you are living in neighborhoods with people who are white Americans , and going to school with people who are white Americans, and what they might call priviledged, a blind man can see the degradation that people of other cultures, especially black people, experience, and the standard that they have to live up to in order for the environment (world) around them (white society) to give them a chance or to accept them as educated, civilized, and worthy.

I do not hate white people, that is absurd, and I don't promote hate towards any persons or race. And honestly I don't understand your response to what I wrote. I was expressing my experience with a society that sets white people as the standard (standard of living) and an education system that portrays black people, as well as other brown/dark skinned cultures, in a negative, unsightly, ignorant, and poverty stricken light. With the knowledge I have obtained thus far, if I believed what I was taught in school about other cultures (nations), especially Africa (Africans) I wouldn't just be ignorant, I would be missing out on the truth, life, and REAL culture. And this statement pertains more to races of brown/dark skin color nations. Those are the countries that have the darkest light shone on them, yet they have the richest deep history. I consider myself an Asian Indian, and therefore I have no reason to say this, but I am speaking from my own experience about being brown in White America.

Please forgive me if I have offended you, but everything really isn't black and white. And in this country white americans have been placed on a pedestal by nations, cultures, and races from all over, to live up to. When different races come to this country who do they begin to mimick when they are trying to get ahead? Whose ways do they tend to adopt more than anyone? And why? What do other countries see on tv pertaining to the black race in america, and the white race in america? Do you ever wonder what other nations learn about in regards to black americans and white americans, and where their preconveived ideas about people they have never lived with (black & white americans) come from? Do they show them a negative side of black americans like they show americans a negative side of black cultures and other countries with brown people as the dominant.

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