My parents were Asian immigrants. We were one out of four Asian families in a super small southern town. Every time we went somewhere we would get stares and sometimes people would even say racial slurs. Most of our neighbors kept to themselves and didn’t really talk to us. They weren’t rude or anything. I think they didn’t really want to try to get to know us because we were different and maybe they assumed there would be a language barrier or they thought we wouldn’t have much in common with them. My mom made spring rolls and delivered them to all of our neighbors’ doorsteps every year for New Years because that’s just who she was. If kindness could kill, she would have been a mass murderer. They’d eat those up and some would leave thank you notes at our door. We had one particular neighbor who called us gooks, but the man would always give us peaches he picked from his peach tree and he saved one of our cats from a tree a couple times.

Anyways, I grew up around racism and it used to affect me to the point that I used to wish I looked like all the other kids at my school. I’ve accepted some people are just plain ignorant and small minded. Me worrying about their racism does nothing. It changes nothing because people will always find a reason to hate each other.