Essay grand prize winner Johnathan Tarancon from NUAMES Charter High School
Education plays a major part in how society’s youth treat each other. We learn that African Americans were slaves, that Jews were killed and chased from their homes, that the Japanese were put into prison cams; but that only makes it look like racism is a problem of the past. It’s not.
The USOE Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Contest is in its 28th year. It is open to all Utah students in seventh through twelfth grades, regardless of whether they attend a Utah public school. This year, students were asked to answer “How are you demonstrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of unity in your life.” A list of all the winning students, which includes grade-level winners and the video contest winners, may be found by clicking here.
The essay that follows is by Johnathan Tarancon, a tenth grade student in Mrs. Brenda Wise’s class at NUAMES High School.
3 Steps to Unity
Showing Unity in today’s day and age is easier than it would have been a hundred years ago; because the ‘colorblind’ gene has become dominant, Segregation has been segregated from society and education. These three things make it much easier to accept other races. Only 52 years ago John Howard Griffin lived as a white man, and then a black man. He saw how the blacks were treated, and when he published his work he was hated. Because he had shown the white how the south really was. That was what I consider the first real step to true ‘colorblind’ society.
Being ‘colorblind’ meaning that you look at every race the same, you see the skin difference but you don’t care! Being ‘colorblind’ is significant, because if you truly are ‘colorblind’ than you will be a good example for others. That sounds really mushy but realistically it’s true, if you see someone isn’t racist you have no reason to be prejudice against racist people. So the circle or racism stops with ‘colorblindness’.
Segregation has been segregated from society, when we had segregation in our society the law encouraged racism. Now that we don’t have segregation the law is neutral, perhaps they could be against racism by then I suppose the laws would be prejudice then we would be putting down the racist in the same way they did to African Americans and Hitler put down the Jews. So I suppose neutral is the way the law has to be but because they are neutral now the minorities have equal rights. Equal rights suggest to people that have always been neutral that they must be equals! And of course minorities are equals.
Education plays a major part in how society’s youth treat each other. We learn that African Americans were slaves, that Jews were killed and chased from their homes, that the Japanese were put into prison cams; but that only makes it look like racism is a problem of the past. It’s not, Muslims are feared because of 911, Hispanics are harassed because of the illegal ‘aliens’ coming from Mexico, The Homosexuals are harassed by many churches, the Republicans are called racist if they disagree with Obama’s political solution, and many other groups are still harassed today. If we really want to become unified as a society, then we need to do more than just educate on the past, but teach the current problems as well.
I realize that the subject was about how I show unity but I honestly don’t think it matters how I show unity, I believe it matters much more how to solve the problems we have now, and why we can solve them now when we couldn’t 100 year ago. ‘Colorblind’ is how you start to solve the problem, with enough ‘colorblind’ people others will start to understand their flaws. Segregation is caused by a majority, but if the majority is of ‘colorblind’ people then segregation will leave society. Finally if we educate our youth today, then their children will not need the education.
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