“Every person for them self” comes from the cliché “every man for him-self”, and is a major issue in the United States. African Americans have worked to promote themselves here in the United States to make the color barriers disappear. Likewise, Hispanics have worked to promote themselves to have their culture seen as equal to that of the white Americans. The light colored Hispanics have not had as much of an issue than that of the tanner or darker ones. The problem here is that each race concentrates so **** accomplishing their goal; that we disregard each other and don’t seem to realize the greater good.Third grade was my first encounter with racism. There was a beautiful new girl in my class named Kristen. She was blond with blue eyes. We played together for the first few days, but then she started being mean to me. She and the rest of the class began to tease me saying things like “All Puerto Ricans smell like fried food” and “Puerto Ricans should go back where they came from.” Being one of the only Puerto Ricans in my small private school, I transferred to a public school where my parents thought there would be more diversity.I never experienced direct discrimination in my public school. Instead I experienced a type of discrimination that I had never noticed until I grew and learned to read between the lines. Although I was friends with the “black” kids, the “white” kids, the Hispanics and the Russians, I thought I needed to represent my culture. And I didn’t represent it like my parents (who were born in Puerto Rico) thought me to. They taught me to never forget my roots and to keep a strong Spanish. Instead, I dressed like a little “gangster.” I didn’t focus in school and acted like minorities were presented. Like I was from the “hood.”In my Honors Latin American studies class I learned about the encomienda system. The encomenderos (which came from Europe) would buy a piece of land in South America. They would do the indigenous people a “favor” and have them work on their land as indentured servants. The debt was so high that the children, which were born into this system, would get stuck; leaving generations of these indentured servants to work on this land with no way out. White Americans see the African Americans and Hispanics as low class citizens because most of us see ourselves that way. We don’t realize that this is no longer a society with a caste system. We don’t need to stay in what we were born into. There is always room to move up and in some cases hit rock bottom. As minorities we need higher standards. We need to actually put an effort in to make it in a “white mans world.” Yes we see that the white people have been more privileged than the minorities in the United States, but it isn’t completely their fault. We are letting them see us that way.For hundreds of years, and to this day, opportunities have been afforded to people because of their race. There are many different levels of opportunities based on race, ranging from the presidential elections to high school jobs. Ignorance has brought some people to vote for Barrack Obama in the upcoming presidential elections, not because of his capability to be a strong president; but because he would be our first black president. Some will vote for Hillary, not because of what she stands for, but because she is a woman.At the Holyoke mall Abercrombie and Fitch was closed for a while because most of the workers were beautiful white people. Now I find myself walking into a store with the minority being white and the majority being African American and Hispanic. It seems that in our society people of color are getting a job to fit a quota. Job opportunities should be presented to the one who will actually help the company, or in some cases the country, prosper. If a white person is more qualified for a job than the person of color, the white individual deserves the job. If there is a majority of white people in the company, the person who is most qualified still deserves the job. If a person of color or a white person is equally qualified for the job, the person of color should get it. Only because in the society we live in it will take the person of color 6 months to find a job, because of indirect discrimination, and it will take the white person 6 weeks.Because of all of the above, stronger education needs to be afforded to the underprivileged. I once heard a metaphor about a gardener. The Gardner was taking care of his two gardens, one in the sun and one in the shade. The flowers in the sun would be prettier because of all the vitamins and proteins it would receive naturally. But he just needed to put a little more effort into the garden in the shade so it would be just as pretty as the one in the sun. The white people and white colleges are the gardens in the sun. Historically black colleges and universities are the gardens in the shade. They are the ones that need to put in extra effort to reach out to the minorities. I am not saying to forget about the white people and the white colleges. If I am good at soccer and need to work on my basketball skills, I can’t stop practicing for soccer. If I abandoned my soccer skills to work on basketball, my strength would go down. Yes the white people are strong in society, but what we need to do as minorities is work hard to show our talents and teach the white people. We need to start with grade school and put an emphasis on unity. At my high school we have Unity Day. A day where we replace classes with workshops about unifying, not only race, but discrimination in general. We also have Mix-It-Up day where we are forced to sit with a completely different group of kids in classes and lunch rooms. We need to organize more mentorship programs for grade school students. And work with community organizations; such as the Martin Luther King community center and the Puerto Rican cultural center, and all others related.We need to come together as minorities and whites to live up to our name, be the Unity in the United States, to unify all the races living in it. Not just the Hispanics and African Americans, but the Asians and the rest of the world that has joined and come into the U.S. We need to start small. It’s not osmosis and it won’t happen in a few days, but the first seed needs to be planted.
