by Manju Weber

Created on: January 21, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

I remember as a young girl travelling on a crowded city bus in London, surrounded by other Indians like myself, and white English people, staring at the coloreds with not very pleasant expressions on their bland faces. I was younger and thought it strange that I felt so unwelcome and odd in the country I was been forced to grow up in. My parents made the decision to move there, not me, but I was having to face the unfairness of racism exhibited in all facets of life. Later in life I found myself on another crowded bus in downtown Philadelphia, again surrounded by a mixture of humanity. I felt less threatened this time and found myself chatting with an older black lady. We talked about what I wanted to do with my life, education, different places in the world, similar experiences in regards to school, growing up feeling "lesser" than others,etc. I noticed we had a lot in commom, and my mind raced back to a conversation I had had with a woman on the Tube in London, years prior. The conversation had been similar and my mind raced again and again to different times and people I had talked to along life's way. I dawned on me some years later that we are indeed different in many ways from each other in our backgrounds, educations, upbringing, but we all seem to find so much in commom when we take time to actually converse with one another, no matter who we are and where we come from. We all have dreams, dissappointments, hopes, fears, a past, a future, and we all are curious about one another. The more we talk to one another the more we come to realize that this world is indeed full of people who share more in common as human beings, not divided by lines on a map someone drew ages ago. I remember being asked many times in my life, what race I was? I answered accordingly, but now I realize that there is a different answer I can give. I havealready tried it and the result was a beaming smile on the face of the "stranger" I had given my answer to.

An older man, asked me what my race was,after chatting with me for a while on a park bench in West Chester, Pennsylvania. His grandchild and my child were both having fun on the slide. I looked him straight in the eyes and told him, "Sir, the same as you." He looked puzzled and shook his head slightly. "I am not like you, I am not from India." he stated with a perplexed look.
"All I know is that I used to think there were many races in this big wide world, but now I see that there is only one race in this world, and that is the Human race." I knew I had struck a chord. I had unsettled the man to stop and think. I had not asked him what race he was, but he had felt complelled to ask me mine. I hoped that he would try to see beyond that about a person, not simply what their race was. I hadn't been offended, simply tired of being asked. The old man looked across at the children playing before him and stared hard at the scene before him. Then a slow nod was followed by a huge smile and the bright blue eyes gleamed with a new understanding.
"That's right, we are all part of one race, the human race, and that's that!"

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