My Fellow Americans

Recently a lot of movies have been coming out involving racism and violence. I myself like these movies simply because I know the scenario to be true. My father is from Iran; some would say I am a "camel jockey". I sat at home and watched Crash and of course I cried like a baby. Not because it was terribly sad, but because I was so ashamed and angry. I do not usually look down upon people because you never really know a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes and since my shoes are all the uncomfortablity that I would like to suffer I choose to believe that people from all walks of life, have problems just like I do, no matter what their ethnicity happens to be. As I was saying, I felt ashamed and at moments I was relieved and my heart was filled with pride, but the majority of it, I was ashamed. You come away from the movie with an understanding of who racism actually hurts...EVERYONE. It makes the whites no smarter, the blacks no more endowed, the Mexicans no more inclined to privilege and the Asian no more better off. No one benefits. Not that any of the races mentioned above have told me this is their ailment with racism it is just for scenario’s purposes.I was always told that people are racist because it makes them feel powerful and the other weak. The power does not reside in the person doing the name-calling, it lives in the words. The power will always belong to no specific person, nor should it.I cannot make a judgment without putting my own feelings on the subject into perspective and I cannot fathom what another person of another race may go thru on a daily basis, but I can make an effort to not think in those terms.One thing I think of in a testing persective is...If you read about a crime out of a newspaper and no name was mentioned what color would you picture the person they were talking about? People like to say the word statistically,such as, most violent crimes are committed by African-Americans(I do not know if this is true so in converstion I would never say that) but in all actuality what that means is “in my mind”. In a thesis paper if you mentioned a statistic you better name your source or you will not end up with a very good grade. Unless you are willing to provide the statistics please, refrain from such statements. The other movie that really got to me was Hotel Rwanda. Throughout this movie I felt sick with shame. In one scene when all the “whites” were being evacuated, the character played by Joaquin Phoenix, says he feels so ashamed for leaving so many people behind to fight a losing battle. I feel that way on a daily basis. Americans will gladly go to another country to help them become a democratic nation, specifically Iraq. But when genocide is plaguing a nation, we evacuate. Maybe because there was no oil. Ok that was harsh! But still, instead of monitoring the democratic involvement of Iraq, why are we not in Africa helping with the AIDS epidemic, or the starving nations or anywhere that would not just benefit Americans, but benefit the human race? I get so angry when I look at a newspaper and on the front page is another death in Iraq and on page 10 is the headline…”One million more dead in Africa”. I am ashamed. I am ashamed of our treatment towards one another, our treatment towards other countries and basically Americans in general. Not to say that it is better anywhere else…..but maybe I should find out.