Accepting All

"Be the change you want to see in the world." Gandhi’s words could not be truer in a modern society that is filled with discontent and rife with unrest. Whether it is parading for higher quality working rights in Bangladeshi sweatshops, or rebellions in the Arab Spring or PEAneedsfeminism, activism on today’s modern global scale has reached a size never before seen in the history of civilization. There has never been a higher overall aggregate amount of equality among the peoples of this planet. And yet, we still argue about so many things, for human society is indeed nowhere close to perfection. Even so, the method to attain these goals is often called into question.I, for one, believe that achieving equality comes with believing in equality. After all, that is the most fundamental concept to attaining equality among all peoples, isn’t it? So why is it necessary to be reminded of the wrongdoings of the past? Especially in such a monotonous way? I grew up and attended grades K-5 at an American public school. And like any other school, I was raised to learn about slavery in the south, about the Civil War and about the Civil Rights movement. We were taught, in a matter of words that white Americans in these portions of history are the racists and that the rest are all the victims of racism. And sure, that may be the fact, but where is the necessity in constantly reminding us through a curriculum that consistently portrays white Americans as the aggravator of racism? Pirates of the Barbary North African coast once captured and sold European slaves from Spain and France. The Rwandan Genocide, the Nanking Massacre, so many other acts of blatant, unforgivable racism throughout history on a similar, if not greater, magnitude than that in the United States have always existed, but never made it into the curriculum of our public schools, and has blurred our perceptions of racism as acts between races into simply those of whites.I’m sure many of you have heard of the experiment in which two babies were placed in a room. One was the child of an African American couple, and the other was that of a white American couple. The two two-year old toddlers, who had had very little exposure to media or anything from the outside world, were placed in a room, and given toys to play with, and of course, they got along very well. Then there is also the more peculiar, more common story of adopted children, who don’t notice the difference between themselves besides the inherent skin color, until they are introduced to racism, until they learn about Black History month in the 3rd grade. Racism is not natural, and that is why we long for equality in the first place. So why do we keep emphasizing it so heavily in the upbringing of our children, and why with such polarity?A more familiar and slightly newer incident is that of the trending tweet, #CancelColbert. Stephen Colbert, the well renowned host of the Colbert Report, posted a satirical tweet mocking the Asian-American community in response to the creation of a society benefiting Native Americans. Suey Park, a 23 year old activist and writer was aggravated by the joke and its satirical racism towards Asians, so she started the tweet #CancelColbert while exhorting her 20k+ followers to trend the hashtag.Following her tweeting and her hilarious failure in an interview with the Huffington Post, Suey Park has received mostly, if not completely, negative comments regarding her approach to the situation. In fact, some reactionists have now largely branded her as a racist who stated that all white men were incapable of understanding perspective. Many have told her that she was only spurring thoughts of racism, and I don’t believe it could ever be more evident in the light of her hypocrisy. Still, aside from criticizing Ms. Park, the evident effects and the twittersphere’s visible lashback send a message, that activism must be approached in the proper way so that it achieves its original goals. I’m not calling for a removal of African-American history from our curriculum, but I’m simply asking for the consideration of the potential consequences of its teaching. America has always sought to be an all-encompassing nation, and why should it be necessary to consistently remind ourselves otherwise?