Over the last few months, the world has watched the United States burning of anger for violent acts against African Americans. As a reaction, we have seen frustrated people all over the world militating to stop this violence in various ways, raising their voices and willing to change the persistent racial discrimination we see in many of our societies today. This fight against discrimination and racism is more than fair, but is the will to stop violence and change the police system enough or should we dig deeper in our societies to understand what the real issue is?

WHO I AM

My name is Marta and I am 21 years old. I have always had this strong passion for traveling, and thanks to my parents, I had the chance to do it a lot over my life. Probably, the fact that during all my trips and travels I found out that each of them is a gift and an opportunity for us to grow and learn something about the world and about ourselves as well, is what made this passion of mine able to push me further in my discovery of “the international”. Today I am studying International Relations in University and I cannot but blame my abroad experiences for this.

MY EXPERIENCE 

Four years ago, among other things, I spent a year studying abroad in the United States, in Maryland. I was an exchange student in high school: a teenager living her “American dream”. This experience was amazing: I had the chance to meet wonderful people, to change perspective, to grow, developing my passions as I had never done before, and to understand and meet “the other”. Over that year, I experienced that what is different is not wrong nor better, but simply different.

At the same time, I was really surprised to see and experience first-hand American racism, which revealed itself very different from that spreading in Europe in those years, which was growing out of migrations intolerance. As a matter of fact, once I started attending high school in Maryland, I found out how deeply rooted racism is in American society, how sneaky and common it is. During that year, I found out that among high school students in the USA, there are some “things” that are considered for white people, and others for “black ones”. There are “black” fast foods, clothes shops, names, sports, outfits, and phrases. Of course, I have not forbidden myself from going to certain fast foods, or to buy in some shops, but my friends would comment, saying that “that’s such a black thing to do”. My shopping in certain places would make my style of way of behaving that of “a white girl’s” rather than “a black girl’s”. Even when signing up for university tests or apply for a university, you are demanded to declare your ethnicity, whether you are white, North American, or Latin American, Africa American, Asian, or white European, etc.

This should make us all reflect upon what we have seen these years. It is not only a problem of white supremacy, or of police forces, but also a deeper, social one. This strong conviction of being so different one from the other, and the idea that certain behaviors are for certain people only, should make us think about the issue from a different perspective.

FREEDOM AS A SOLUTION

Maybe we should all work more, on the idea that before being black or white, we are all people with desires, passions, and interests, and that these do not necessarily depend on the color of our skin or on our cultural roots, but rather on the fact that we are humans, all of us. Maybe we should cooperate and work together to create a society where everyone really is free to be who they are, without any fear of discrimination, violence, or without feeling closed within present standards that depend on certain characteristics of their body or skin color.

The current pandemic situation has exacerbated the fact that after all, the color of our skin really is not what makes us different, but the conviction of this difference is what really separates us.

We should consider living in a multicultural society as a way to learn from one another, rather than as a way to impose our own traditions on someone else’s.