Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about equality and privileges. In school, we are learning about how “Race is a fiction. Racism is not.” Not only do teenagers, like myself, learn about equality in school, but also in real life and social media. I live in a Hispanic area where we are either surrounded by people that don’t feel like excelling in their academics or we are those people that just do not like school. I am the kind of person that not only wants to exceed in their academics but also wants to be as well in extracurriculars and have a social life. Many of my friends enjoy school, whether or not they want to admit it or not. But there are some people that I have come to know that are smart but they are being told that they cannot do as well as the people around them. They are told these pieces of fiction, mostly because of their background and culture. In my opinion,  I do not believe that anyone is brainless. They are just not motivated to transcend in their life. Equality means being treated equally no matter who you are or where you come from. I believe that whether you are Asian, Hispanic, Caucasian,etc., you should be able to do your very best in whatever you put your mind to.

Besides school, teens hear about inequality through social media. To adults that do not use Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat, you may think that these are just apps that rot your child’s brain, but it also provides news in a way that we pay attention. When I was younger, I would watch the news because it would air around the time I woke up for school, but now that I have to be at school at 6:45 in the morning, I cannot watch the news. With my schedule, I just do not have time, so if I have a few minute to spare, I go on Instagram. I see videos that spread throughout the media. Usually, if I see a piece of news one day, the next day it will appear on the news channel. So, these may seem like a teenagers’ way of getting distracted but we receive more information than anyone actually knows. I tend to see videos that have someone getting verbally or physically abused due to the color of their skin or the individual’s background. I despise these kinds of videos because why should someone be treated differently due to who they are? Why do people want to be in a world where everyone is the same? What happened to “being different is better?”

A short while ago, my class did an activity where we found factors in two people that led them to be either prosperous or underprivileged. My teacher would show us two pictures about two different types of people. One was a girl that was dark-skinned that lived in a household where her parents always worked, the house was unhygienic, and she was left to do her homework and housework by herself. There was another picture that displayed a Caucasian boy that lived in a well-held household. He had parents that did not have to work as much, were around to help him with his homework, and kept the house clean. These small factors had a big influence on their lives. The girl didn’t have enough money to go to a school where the teachers enjoyed their jobs and wanted to teach the students. The boy went to the school where they were taught better because they had the best teachers that wanted to teach the children to the best of their abilities. Once they wanted to apply for college, the male had his parents paying his tuition for the university while the female was juggling work and polytech and still getting in debt. Over the years, the young man had his father help him get a position at an internship and get loans approved. The young lady had to use her time to take care of her father that was becoming ill, yet he could not stop working due to the fact that he, most likely, did not have enough money to retire. She was not able to get loans approved so instead of getting a job that she would enjoy, she must obtain any job in order to stay financially stable. She becomes a waitress while he is being promoted in his workplace. The last images become one. They are both in the same room. He is at a party for his promotion and she’s catering at the party. The activity’s purpose was to help us recognize how people do not know how privileged they are until they see someone else’s life.

In my opinion, people should be treated in the same manner no matter what color they are or background they have. Every individual should be treated on who they are instead of how they look like. “Race is Fiction. Racism is not.”