Race in my life

Race has always been an interesting topic for me. I grew up in a small town Northwest of Chicago. I went to a small Catholic school, and a small Catholic high school. Now that I think back on it, I lived in a pretty whitebread town. I think the concept of race, in and of itself, hadn't quite registered for me yet. As I was growing up, it seemed like no one in my town was focused on race. We had African-American neighbors and my best friend was Latino. That's just how my life went. I went through my day to day activities not focusing on diversity or the state of race relations within the United States. To me, there were no such thing as race relations. I would watch the news coverage of riots and the rare hate crime against a minority and see no motive. I wouldn't understand what drove people to violence against another group of people. It wasn't until I got midway through high school that I began to see race as a palpable concept. It seemed that the older I got, the more and more I had to be wary of what seemed to be a "race variable." I view this as some aspect of my surroundings that has to deal with minorities and their perspective. The older I became, the more careful I became. I didn't want to accidentally offend something by saying something that I didn't even consider offensive. This was a stress factor that I wasn't exactly used to. It almost seems like prejudice is ingrained in institutions such as the education system. Everyone starts out innocent as a child and steadily become exposed to hatred and bigotry as life goes on. I wish it didn't have to be like that. For a day, I wish that people would look at everything in their life objectively. Forget what the news says, forget what your family says, forget what your religion dictates. Just think what you feel. Yes, some people are just plain racist. I blame institutional racism for that. But most people would stop treating people as "different" and start treating them as human beings. That's the way I want my life to get back to. I want a return to that childlike innocence that dictated my early life. I want to walk down the street without any preconceived notions about the people walking past me. I think that we have a lot of work on our hands. Our education system needs to be restructured in a way that doesn't breed prejudice. Our economy needs to level out so there aren't really anymore "whitebread" towns. This is effectively impossible, of course, but we can work towards it. Race shouldn't have to be a factor in how people treat other people.

http://scholar.harvard.edu/jlhochschild/publications/race-ethnicity-and-education-policy
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal