Schools are not as safe as we think.

During my freshman year, the people I were “friends” with started to change. They started to try to be cool and started using slurs that normal people would never use. That year, I learned how to deal with being called a “chink”. My friends would constantly make fun of me about my rigorous practice schedule for piano and that my parents would beat me if I didn’t get A+’s on every test. Throughout the year, I just noticed things that were being said about me that no one would ever say to my face until one kid said to me. I was in Spanish minding my own business when this group of boys was being really loud and annoying. I told them to shut up so everyone in the class could work without distraction. One of the white, fake popular kids in that group told me that my opinion doesn’t matter because I can’t see anyway. The idea of stereotypes behind Asian people is that some of them are helpful to us and they push us to work harder. But many of them are just derogative and bruise our self-confidence. Being told I had a small dick in 8th grade is something no one wants to go through. Others may have had it worse off than me but I want to bring it to attention that students are increasingly learning and becoming more inherently racist as we grow, and that this is a recipe for disaster.