Unequal Opportunities for Equal Human Beings

Both my parents emigrated from El Salvador many decades ago. My dad is particularly dark-skinned, but my mom is rather light-skinned. Despite her lighter complexion, my mom still looks "Latina". When I was a small child, around the age of two or three, my skin color more resembled that of my father. My mom would constantly tell me that I will be discriminated against at one point or another. She would prepare me by telling me to learn English fast and learn it well. Being taught English mostly by my grade school teachers would ensure I do not develop a Hispanic accent. The warning my mom gave me has stuck to me throughout all these years. I made it a mission, even as a child, to learn and speak English as well as I possibly could. The issue with what happened is a few years later, around the time I was seven-years-old, my skin lightened to a complexion even lighter than my mom's. I began to experience, at a young age, the definition and effects of both colorism and racial discrimination, and how these ideologies may affect my opportunities at receiving a proper education and career. After all, statistics show that between the years of 2006 to 2010 only 13% of Latinos over the age of 25 have earned a bachelor's degree, compared to 29.3% of whites. Although my mother most likely did not know these numbers exactly, she knew these statistics existed; and therefore attempted to shield me from them at an early age.

I grew up in South San Francisco, which has a 34% Latino population, as well as a 37.3% white population. Despite the near equal numbers of both groups of people, Latino parents seem to still have a fear that their children will be discriminated against. I went to Spruce Elementary School, in which the majority of students were non-white Latinos. During my fourth grade year, I told other Latino friends of mine what my mother had told me many years prior. It was a complete shock to me that my peers were given similar lessons by their parents. The idea that there are people in the world that will dictate how I am to be treated, as well as what opportunities I should be given, simply by the color of my skin (or even the shade of my skin-tone) frightened me. That being said, it also strengthened me to become as assimilated as possible. I needed to become "white washed", for otherwise, I will not have the same amount of opportunities as I can. These are the feelings I held while I was a small child.

Now at nearly twenty-two years of age, I still have never been discriminated against because of my ethnicity and race. Although I have no certain explanation for this, my guess is that my lighter complexion, as well as my articulate command of the English language has allowed me to pass as someone who is "not really Latino". This may have allowed me to avoid the calamities of being discriminated against. My mother taught me at a young age what could happen if the color of my skin does not appeal to some people. I cannot decide which is more saddening and frightening, the fact that I, along with other young peers at my school, were told how to "blend in" to avoid being treated as anything less than  human, or that I will possibly one day have to teach my children the same scary things my mother told me as a child in order for he or she to have the same human rights we unconditionally deserve.

The idea of racism continues to persist within the United States, despite laws prohibiting it, because there are still not enough people in the world that understand its destructive, harmful nature. Although the United States have taken steps forward in terms of civil rights, the country still needs acres to go. I believe that not enough time has passed for more educated individuals to become the majority in the world, and can therefore help reduce the prevalence of racism and discrimination. I am not sure how long that will take, but the thought that until that moment more individuals will have their lives negatively impacted, ruined, or even taken due to the effects of racism is extremely disheartening.