Race: Skin Deep?

According to the Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Race is defined as any of the different varieties or populations of human beings distinguished by a) physical traits such as hair, eyes, skin color, body shape, etc.: traditionally, the three primary divisions are Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid, and the many subdivisions are called races, b) blood types, c) genetic code patterns, d) all their inherited characteristics which are unique to their isolated breeding population. When someone hears the word ‘race’, they usually just think of the color of someone’s skin; but race is so much more than that. Your race defines not only what you look like but even some of your personalities. People tend to be drawn to people of the same race as them; for example Italians will hang out with Italians and Germans will hang out with Germans. Most people are drawn to people who are like themselves, which isn’t always a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing though, when you don’t come outside your comfort zone and met new people who are different from you. It is extremely important to expand your horizons and met new people. I went to a very small high school. I graduated with seven other Caucasians, like myself and one African American. If you would talk to him today, he would say that he loved us all and we were like a family to him. We never looked down at him or thought of him as different. We loved him the same and we truly were like one family. In our high school, there were a couple Indians, a few African Americans, and one girl from Thailand. With a school that small everyone knew everyone. Caucasians were the majority by far, but personally I never looked down on the handful of students that looked differently then me. To me, color was always skin deep. I would get to know the real person underneath the skin and then form my opinion of them. I hate when people assume something about a person because of the way they look and then they refuse to get to