We Are All Human

[/media-credit] March On Washington, Unknown Author, National Archives

The first time it happened was in elementary school. My teacher put on “Our Friend, Martin,” an animation about a boy who travels back in time and meets Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That was the first time that it was made clear to me that I was different than everyone else because of my skin color.

There’s an indescribable feeling you get when, because of your skin color, everyone in the class is looking at you while the teacher speaks about slavery, Scottsboro, Jim Crow, etc.

From a young age we are force-fed a history full of stories about racism, sexism, and hatred. What we don’t realize is, the more we talk about those things, the more they exist.

MLK Jr. said he wished for a world where people are not seen by the “color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

And yet, we do live in a world where, among many things, ABC TV shows like “Blackish” and “Fresh Off The Boat” misinform the public with fuel for stereotyping and dramatized culture. People are led to believe every person of color is a basketball player, math whiz, drug pusher, and the list goes on.

Even Black History Month misleads people. Every February, the shortest month of the year, a handful of topics are visited and are often just ignored or forgotten come the first of March.

In an interview by Mike Wallace on a Sixty Minutes special, actor, Morgan Freeman, says, “Which month is White History Month? [Black History Month] is ridiculous…Black history is American history.”

We need to stop throwing labels on everyone. We are who we are and we are not who aren’t.

In an interview by Katie Couric, Judy Sheindlin, better known as Judge Judy, says, “I am not a woman-lawyer. I am a lawyer who happens to be a woman…You define yourself. If you let other people define you, that’s a mistake.”

If I could go back, I would give myself a hug and say, “You are human and that’s all that matters.” It’s about time we reevaluate what we are teaching the youth and what we allow to exist in the world today.

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Zac Jonassaint

The panda is his spirit animal. He is an artisan in the arts of Smash Bros. and Poetry. He is pursuing his lifetime journey of uncovering the identity of the Zodiac Killer, finding who really killed JFK, learning what's inside the briefcase from Pulp Fiction, and being taught how to cook by Daddy Ramsay. He is Zachary Jonassaint.