by J. L. Kilgore

Created on: December 08, 2008   Last Updated: April 02, 2012

The term racist is subjective, and has gone through a plethora of meanings. A textbook definition would include a feeling that your race is superior, and that you have a prejudice and intolerance of other races. Today, if a white person says something which offends a black person, they are immediately labeled as a racist. However, if the tables were turned, no mention would be made. One major instance of hypocrisy that I see on an almost daily basis is their 'nicknames' for each other. They call themselves the very thing that they don't want white people to call them. They justify it by saying that it's a different spelling, and it's in a different context. With all the letters, vowels, and combinations of these letters that can be made, the one word that is thrown into question is the one that is used as a nickname? For some reason, this doesn't sit right with me.

I think we're all a little racist, in that we feel the need to put a label on everyone. And with that label, comes the corresponding stereotype. I would imagine that a red-haired, green-eyed person would automatically be labeled as Irish - thus a drunk. Or a dark-skinned person wearing a turban is automatically a terrorist - right? A brown person with a Spanish accent must be a Mexican - thus lazy, and here in our country illegally. I could go on forever. It's just like when people hear my last name, they automatically assume that I am Scottish - even though they don't consider the fact that it's my married name they're basing things off of. (I am in reality English, German, and Irish, but you'd never guess by my birthname) Before, my last name ended in an 'o', so of course, I was Italian!

It doesn't make things easy when the race in question holds true to their stereotype. If these people who cry racism would stop meeting the expectations and standards that they're held to, we wouldn't have such a problem. 'The Man' is not holding you down, you're holding yourselves down. You're ok with the fact that you live a sub-standard lifestyle, you debase the English language, you expect the government to pave the way for you, and you have no motivation nor ambition. If these factual statements make me a racist, so be it. Until these images change, and you prove yourselves otherwise, yes, people are always going to look down on you - and with good reason.

Conclusively, as stated previously, I do not consider myself to be racist as stated by a dictionary. If it's that definition that we're going by, and not what the meaning has been distorted to be, then no.

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