<< Martin Luther King Jr.'s Legacy

By Victoria Imtanes, 15, Fairfax HS
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Our generation has grown up thinking that we are only as good as our society expects us to be. People today are still under the influence of terrible stereotypes. Almost every other day you hear from your parents and the media that “You’re Mexican so you are not supposed to be smart” or “You’re black so you should be on a sports team.” These may seem like small things, but actually, they can brainwash teens into thinking that they are only able and supposed to do what the environment and society tells them their race does.

I spoke to a Latina girl who was trying to explain to me how hard it is to strive for good grades. She said she told her family back home in South Central that she joined TeenLine, a hotline that helps teens in trouble, and how she was looking forward to it. All they did was grunt and ignore her. But when her 11-year-old cousin got in a fight and beat up a girl, they started cheering and congratulating her. They told her “You could learn from your cousin.” She told me “How am I supposed to keep striving for success when all around me people are expecting me to fail? That mentality they give me really does make me want to give up.”

Many people out there are going through the same problems and are expected to grow up a certain way just because of their race. We can’t let that happen. I know I don’t want to be another statistic encouraging the generalizations people make about certain racial groups.  I was talking to a black girl one time about my favorite food and said, “Do you know what yams are? … I just love them.” She got offended and said, “Hello? I’m black. OF COURSE I know what yams are.” I know she wasn’t trying to offend me, but by stereotyping herself she hurt me because then I knew how far we were from true equality. This type of generalization forces teens to act a certain way just to get approval from their parents or friends.

Another black girl in my class really cared about her grades, did her work and participated in class activities. Then some classmates started saying, “Why are you trying to act white? Just stop because it won’t happen … you’re black!” Since when are all white people smart and black people dumb? The same girl walked in a week later, a changed girl. She had no books, pencils or paper and started acting totally unlike herself in an “I’m too cool for school” kind of way.  If this problem persists, there won’t be forced segregation, but willing segregation of races. It has already started today. I walk around my school and see people in big groups of blacks, Mexicans, Asians, etc.

How will people really become equal if we are constantly putting some races down and raising others? We need to step up and break the stereotypes, statistics and generalizations we have fallen into! I think we achieved Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream on the outside, but on the inside, in the unwritten rules and laws, we still have a long journey ahead of us.