Babies are born as objective beings. They have no preconceived notions to sway them and no past experiences to compare situations to. All the knowledge, love, and evil they will posses as adults will be ingrained by outer stimuli like parents, friends, television, school, world events, and so on. Admittedly, some of their knowledge will come from instinct; after all we’re only animals. Nevertheless, a person’s beliefs are a culmination of observations they’ve gathered since birth.

I’d always known that I was a little different from my classmates. My dad was white and my mom was from Taiwan. However, I didn’t see how the world defined me. That is why, as a little sixth-grader, I was shocked by the categorized world that was lying ahead of me. I could only guess as to why labels and strange words were attributed to everything from people to a style of music. I understood that race was a way to distinguish people of different genetic traits, but I didn’t know why it had so much influence on how people regarded each other.

With all of the racist jokes that nobody means and the subtle segregation, it adds up to a young generation of ignorance. And that mindless generation is mine. And I’m not proud of it. That’s not to say that in the grand scheme of things we haven’t made progress. It means that we still have a long way to go.

Many people are blind followers of “humorous racism.” But these harmless jokes are not harmless. They’ve poisoned me and you and every other person in this school. What shook me awake from this trance were some wise words from my Chinese teacher, Dr. Zhao. “When I came to America I was so confused. White is the color of paper, yellow is the color of a banana, and black is the color of a chalkboard, but in America they mean more. But why do they mean more? They’re just colors!” said Zhao.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. Race doesn’t matter, yet cracking jokes about it doesn’t help that notion. That is why I’m sharing my story and calling out to you. I’m not asking you to change all of your habits, just remember: what you hear isn’t always true, so don’t let the unfeeling machine of our society cloud your judgments of others or yourself.