I read this blog and many others at a site and I wanted to share it with you. On Tumblr, there is a site titled, wearenottrayvonmartin with some great words and thoughts. anonymously submitted to wearenottrayvonmartin I am not Trayvon Martin. I am an upper-class Indian-American male that is attending a highly selective college, where so many of my fellow schoolmates come from equally wealthy private high schools on the East Coast. There are very few people I know that look like Trayvon there. I am a brown man, and people have expectations of me. They are surprised to learn that I want to write movies, not medical textbooks. They are surprised to learn that I was approached for modeling work, not an engineering internship. They are surprised to find I do not fit their mold. I am also well-built, like my father who was a high school athlete. People are surprised to see an Indian kid on the field. Once, when I scored in soccer, the other team’s defense simply called me a sand nigger. They don’t expect me to play well. Some even wonder if I have African or Latino blood within me. People expect obedience out of the brown man. They expect us to be left-brained automatons with thick accents that seek guidance from someone else. People are surprised to learn I play in a punk band, and that I even have a rebellious streak — I’m a feisty person and I am proud of it, for it destroys expectations levied upon me. People forget that centuries before the people of India met a white person, that we were doing quite well for ourselves. I live in a cold state. I travel every now and then and with my jacket or hoodie on, I get suspicious looks from some of the older white folk at the airport. It makes me sad that I know what they’re thinking. It makes me angry to think how many times my father was pulled aside for “random checks" by the TSA after 9/11 — he’s a travelling businessman, and the number is quite large. It eats at me every day that my white friends who I love so dearly and would die for, who I have shared classes and sports teams and music and nights out with cannot understand why it hurts me when they say that they think racism is dead. Race is omnipresent. It is important that we acknowledge race in order to prevent appropriation and disrespect towards our fellow men and women. However, it is also important that we do not dwell on race: that we do not set expectations based on skin color and that we do not antagonize each other. We must take care of each other. My pigment is different from my peers, everything else is the same. I am not Trayvon Martin, but I share the love, youth, and zest for life that he did. It is important that our generation’s zeitgeist not be characterized by judgement and stereotypes, but by a deeper understanding of character and level of compassion that so many of our predecessors were unable to experience. It is important that we remember that although we are not Trayvon Martin, we must make the world a better place, so that he may be proud of us, wherever he is. #TrayvonMartin #JusticeforTrayvon #Zimmerman #WeAreNotTrayvon #submission 13 notes Reblog
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 05:33:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015