journal # 5 Waking up and looking like someone of a different race.....

If I woke up and looked like someone of a different race I would be lost. Lost in the fact of identifying all I knew about me and all that I was created to be. I believe we are all created for a unique reason and a God given purpose. I am discovering and continue to discover each day all that God has made me. Each path of my life has been a learning experience and as you gain more life experience it's like getting another piece of the puzzle. Slowly this pieces your picture together, your picture of life, your life being a work in progress. " The Picture" displays, your "masterpiece", as putting all the "pieces" together invokes now one master PEACE.

From what I have recently learned I am privileged because I have white skin. This fact is according to the human meaning of race, which they have defined for a social construction, invented and given meaning to for categorizing us. This categorization however, keeps us in oppression as it segregates and oppresses all races that are not white especially the black race. Eventually this oppression is felt in a sense by everyone. If I woke up and I was of a different race, I would feel there was a purpose for this too.

I have learned the sadness of the social injustice that race has created. This has caused us to deteriorate as a country. Categorizing and separating people because of their skin color does not construct anything but sadness and oppression and weakens us as a people and as a nation.

I would feel the effects of oppression in a much different way if I was black compared to being white. I would constantly be judged from my outside looks and I would have a whole new set of challenges and problems in my life to deal with. Everyday, individually I would feel the struggle and pains and hardships of being stereotyped. I would have acts and attitudes of prejudice against me on a individual, institutional and cultural/structural level. Daily I would face the challenges of being constantly reminded that I was black. Cops may stop me more, or I may be followed around by security in a retail store. Perhaps I wouldn't be able to live in the neighborhood I wanted or get the job I wanted, and I might grow up in poverty and my education would be affected. This would all make me feel like the underdog with all the inequalities that existed in my new world, with indifference's and injustices and people looking at me differently and judging me according to my skin color. I also might live in a neighborhood where crack cocaine has impoverished the community. and crime and violence exists and is the norm. I would also attend an inner city school where 55% of the population graduates, causing income and health disparities with the white communities where 70% of the population graduates. As a minority group I would constantly find myself working harder, fighting harder, being more aggressive to holding myself at a higher standard and doing more to be considered equal and having respect for myself.

I believe that order of the human race necessitates and orderly designer (God) and that we all need to connect to the God within us and treat each other as we'd like to be treated, as human. It would seem somewhat that a social construction was to get rid of God, creating dominance in evolution of a certain species, instead of evolution of the the human race. Our ultimate principal of evolution should be Love as in Love your neighbor as yourself, and that we are all from the "Human Race" and created Equal!