Does Race Matter?

Does race matter? This is a very important question for the United States because there are many races live together in this country.  From Introduction to Journalism class, I went to have race experience at Avila University on February 18th. There was the photo machine called “Race Experience Kiosk”. According to Kiosk website, Over 300 colleges, universities, corporations and government agencies in the US and Canada have used race morphing as part of their diversity and inclusion programming. The Race Experience Kiosk helps us to have new ideas and perspectives about racism and identity. By using the Race Experience Kiosk, we can reach two learning outcomes. The first one is that users of the Race Kiosk will be able to reflect on the factors in our society that perpetuate racism and discrimination. The second one is that users of the race kiosk will be able to consider the value of diversity in our society. I also tried the Race Experience Kiosk, and it was easy to use. You need to answer 3 questions about racism then take a picture. Kiosk will change your face to Asian, White, Black, Indian, Arabian, Latino faces automatically. By experiencing and seeing your own face in different races and skin colors, it would make it easier to understand of different races than your own.

Some people say “Race matters”. However, I strongly believe that race should not matter. Simply we are equal. Look at Avila Campus. We have students who have many different kinds of races, and international students. We all should be treated equally. Because we were born on the same earth. I am not talking about only skin colors. Also LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) should be treated equally. We had no choice how we were born. I am an Asian girl, but I did not choose to be Asian. Please don’t get me wrong, I am proud to be Asian and I am happy with that. Even though I am happy with that, I did not have choice. Nobody had a choice. So why does race matter? Discrimination happens from blindness. Last semester, I was taking philosophy class, and we talked about discrimination. Most of the classmates said, they have discriminated someone in their life. My friend, Asian girl was discriminated once in the dorm. She told me that she was so disappointed and cried I her room at that night. My Arabic friend was discriminated at the airport. Securities took longer time than white people to check his stuff. And he also was screamed at by a stranger when he was in New York City. The stranger basically said something bad about Arabic people. I saw one time by my eyes when discrimination happened. I went to Disneyland with friends, one of them was an Arabic guy. And when we were waiting for an attraction, a white woman stared at him in weird way, and she move her child to not make him close to her child. That was really ridiculous and shameful. It is very sad, but we can see that clearly race still matters.

I strongly wish someday racism, discrimination, and stereotype become things of the past. This things are made by ignorance. In order to not make people racist, we need to have an education about race more. In the United States, we still have a lot of affairs over racism especially between Black people and White people. And actually, I started thinking of racism more since I came to the United States. In Japan which is my country, most of citizens have yellow skin like me. And even if there is other races, I don’t think it is a bad thing at all. Besides I think it is a great thing to be different than others. I feel especially in the United States, there are racism problems. And this is something we need to fix. 

Me as a White girl