What I learned in middle school about race

No blog post next week. I’m taking the week off to rest my brain and enjoy the holiday week.

Today was a crap day for many. The Supreme Court ruled to reject affirmative action in college admission. The ruling will hurt us all, especially Black, Latino, and Indigenous people who want to attend their choice colleges. I’m not going to write about this tonight but encourage you to learn more about it. We now have to work 100 times harder to rebuild and outsmart racism.

Tonight’s blog post was written by my kid who just finished middle school. He offered to write something so I gave him the challenge of writing about what he learned about race in middle school. The essay is very much his voice with some light editing by me to clean it up and clarify in a few places.

What I learned in middle school about race

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In my three years of middle school, I learned much about race identity and how it defines but is also confining to each one of us. These stereotypes are such a widespread thing. Stereotypes are common even among kids as young as middle school. During my middle school years, I have been introduced to many stereotypes and my views on stereotypes have evolved for what I believe to be the better.

While in middle school I have seen and heard some racist stereotypes that were just ruled as a joke and no further thought was given. Examples are “Straight A-Asian kids,” assuming if you are an immigrant you immigrated from certain countries, and other more harmful stereotypes. Many people do not see this as an issue, but this could turn into a problem if other racist policies are turned into jokes like these.

However, I don’t believe this will be the case because among my school’s community if there is even a hint of racism the kid perpetrating it will be hunted down and will never live down what they did. While this may be the case in my school I can not say the same for other schools and how they deal with their stereotypes and racism.

Because my school is proactive about squashing racism where rears its head, I have not been exposed to it to the extent that many people in other schools have. Stereotypes are a quick way back to a much more racist world. In middle school I learned how they can harm people and how harmful they can be to people firsthand; I would not wish this on anyone for any reason. If elected education officials were to make quashing stereotypes a number one priority, then it would eliminate many other problems. As a student please work at eliminating stereotypes in schools.

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