Stand and Deliver
The movie Stand and Deliver is about a teacher named Jaime Escalante who scores a job teaching mathematics at James A. Garfield School in East Los Angeles. He teaches underprivileged students who are doing poorly on their academics. Escalante sets a goal to have the students take AP Calculus by their senior year. He faces complications with social and racial discrimination. Due to this, Mr.Escalantes students are accused of cheating by the Educational Testing Service. He offers to have the students retake the exam despite the fact of having very little time to prepare. The students pass the exam for a second time eliminating the accusation of cheating.
Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to this. However, my cousin attended a private school and was a victim of racism. He was one of the few Mexicans that attended that particular school. He was bullied by his so called "peers" because of his racial background. They used to call him names such as, wet back, beaner, and illegal alien. Not to mention the jokes they would make about his ethnicity. They would ask him "What's a Mexicans favorite sport?" and they would reply "Cross Country." He would laugh at the joke to put up a "front" but deep down inside he would hurt. I believe that race is not something to be made fun of because we are all flesh and bones underneath. We should stand together as a community and help one another instead of putting each other down simply because of our racial background. 
I'm sorry that your cousin had to deal with this.
ReplyDeleteI heard that stupid joke when I was in high school, too. Three of my white classmates made it about another student who actually was on the cross country team. My friend Lázaro, who was born in Mexico and was one of the kindest, calmest people I knew, heard and became very upset. He told me, quietly, that he was so angry that he wanted to beat up our classmates. I knew he wasn't going to beat them up, but for to say something like that was very unusual - I knew that he was deeply hurt. I told him that they were fools, not to pay attention to them - that they weren't worth his time.
I am glad that I helped Lázaro in that small way, but years later I still wish I had stood up to our classmates. Standing up to the bullies would have been the best way to show my friendship to Lázaro - as you suggest, to stand together with him and show that we are all the same. I didn't understand this at the time, but by not telling them to stop their racist jokes, I became part of the problem.