This week has been a really interesting week in the personal development of my topic for myself. This week I somewhat took a left turn on my topic of word aversion, and instead of looking at silly aversions like “moist” or “panties” and instead looked at the word aversion or even underlying hatred towards words like “Cop”, “Black”, or “Arab”. After looking into the news and the different developments of this issue that has become more media centered, I’m starting to get angry and scared. Seeing where our world is headed and seeing what is happening in the news is really bringing to my eyes the reality of this world today. I understand the concepts of fear and stereotypes but what I don’t understand is why we are letting the media morph our minds and their subjective reporting telling us who we should and shouldn’t be afraid of. I remember when 9/11 happened and I was old enough to understand that I was no longer supposed to share what I believed at the time, I understood that people saw me and my family as a threat because all of a sudden Arabs were now all associated with fear. Seeing the struggle my family goes through at the airport just because they are darker skin and have Arab names makes me so angry. Angry because NO ONE should have to get judged based on a stereotype. It literally breaks my heart when I hear and see this. However for the first time in my life, I’m afraid. I’m afraid to tell people where I come from, and that I have Muslim family back home. It’s scary for me to just be me. But on top of this one issue with my family being Arab, my roommates are black. I fear that one day they will be racially profiled and that they wont come home. Growing up I knew the racism in the world, but now, now its making people do some very scary things. I think more then angry I am just scared to see how far this goes. There is not a day that goes by that this isn’t something running through my head, but Its this immediate aversion people are believing then getting to know the real person and who they truly are. The fears that I have now, I don’t think my family foresaw when they moved to this country, but even more so now, how much further is this going to go, how far will our country be led by its emotions and when will this fear be lifted?
Sep 252016