All Humans Are 99.9% The Same

This is a paper I wrote for my English Composition I class. The topic was topic of our choice and I figured I would write about something personal, with the potential to challenge anyone who reads it...

All Humans Are 99.9 percent the Same

“Hurry the hell up! People have things to do!” I turned my head toward the angry voice escaping the infuriated lips of the woman standing in-line at the supermarket. With the exception of my entire body, my head is the only body part I can move on my own. I have never felt this way before: my frozen body shuddering out of control, my thoughts suspended in time. Who am I? Where am I? What is happening? No answer.
Prior to this point I have always anticipated how I would react when faced with racism or any sort of discrimination based on the beautiful color of my skin. I always said I would do this… I would do that… But what do I know? My encounters with racism came by flipping the pages of some history books or pressing the “PLAY” button on a remote control. During a class debate in college, where the professor posed a challenging question – why do the black kids always sit together at the lunch table? – a fellow classmate, the typical “Midd-kid” (name given to any student who attends Middlebury College): white guy, wearing sandals while the temperature outside does not favor sandals, dark-brown pants, short-sleeve shirt, and the typical worn out RedSox baseball cap, stated economical and social differences as reasons why the white kids and the black kids remained segregated in the lunch room: “By putting myself in the shoes of a black student on campus,” he said, “I can imagine how intimidating it would be for him or her to mingle with a white student because most of the white students here are rich; so it would be hard for a black student because most of them come from poor families and we wouldn’t have much in common.” I raised my hands faster than the time it took for me to think about what I wanted to say. “Let me paint a picture for you,” I told him calmly, although in reality, for some reason, my blood reached its boiling point, “my mom works at a nursing home for disabled kids, my dad is a taxi driver who doesn’t really make any money, so by your standards that makes me poor. But look at where you find yourself sitting and where I find myself sitting, look at where you go and eat and where I go and eat, or the dorm where you sleep and the dorm where I sleep. The fact of the matter is that we are equal, you and your high status and me in my low status: we’re both fighting for the same college diploma. Don’t give me that crap that because of my background I would be intimidated to mingle with you. The real reason why we sit together is because we wanna eat!” The way in which I answered the question – and the approbation I received from the professor – made me feel confident I was equipped to deal with such a sensitive issue if I were confronted with it. Alas, the poor guy later spent the duration of class hiding his embarrassment under that RedSox hat after I showed him how stupid his answer really was. However, this is not what wedged my attention.

After I left the class that day, I could not stop wondering why it was only in America that people paid such insignificant attention to minute things. What difference does economical or social status make? Does that make us less humans? In the grander scheme of life, are these petite alterations sufficient to cause me to hate a fellow human? I began to realize that these questions extended way beyond the borders of my class discussion and that it certainly included more than economical or social differences – to the equation should be thrown skin complexion, language, religion, etc; certainly other countries were unquestionably not as infected.

“You were trying to steal from us!” the cashier’s sharp accusation pierced me. She is a typical Italian-looking woman: long nose, hard face, piercing eyes, and black long hair. She sat behind her register with my blue book-bag, which had the stolen items, in her hands. Her look was as sharp as her words, and it hurt. I had just arrived to Florence, Italy less than a month ago for a study abroad program and now I find myself with a few items in my bag (that I did not intend on stealing) that I want to return because I am lacking money. “I’m not stealing anything from you. I only have 30 euros and I’m telling to stop so that I’m not overcharged.” I answered sincerely although still in deep fright. “No! You were going to walk out of here with these items in your bag and sell them on the streets for a lesser price, like the rest of you usually do! And if I hadn’t stopped you…” As the cashier’s allegations kept pouring, my brain was able to freeze time to examine the condition I was in: I’m black – or so they say, I prefer chocolate – and the people I’m being compared to are black. I have a small black suitcase and a book bag – the people I’m being compared to own a small suitcase and a book bag. I am a stranger – dammit! I fit the description of the African guy standing outside of the store selling stuff. When my brain resumed time, the people in-line grew more impatient and they too began shouting at me. I clearly remember understanding the language just a few seconds before this incident, but as things happened, I cannot recall whether or not I still understood. “Ms…” I tried to get her to sympathize, “I just came into this country. I’m a student. I have no reason to try and steal things from the Penny Market!” My attempt failed. She called security and I was rudely escorted out.

I came to my senses as I sat in my living room. “What just happened?” My hands were still shaking. It felt as if a flood wanted to erupt from under my eyes but I held it back. I did not even recall the walk back to my apartment. Where the bags heavy? Did it take me the regular seven minutes to arrive home? Was I really in Italy and are people here racist too? Whatever I felt did not feel good. The only real incident, up to that point, I’ve had with racism – which is somewhat comical – was in Burlington, VT, when an acquaintance and I were about to board a plane en route to Philadelphia during a school break. As the call was made to begin boarding the plane, I arrived at the passage way and handed my boarding pass. Without knowing, there was an elderly white lady behind me who gave her boarding pass after I did. The lady became extremely upset and turned to the person behind her and said, “Why do black people always get in front of white people in line?” Unfortunately for her, the person whom she said that to was the person I was with. I laughed it off. But this one was no laughing matter. I almost went to jail, in a foreign country, for something I did not even consider doing. The situation could have been handled differently; however, the outcome was dictated by petty factors.

For the duration of my stay, I felt like Mel Gibson in What Women Want, able to hear the thoughts of the Florentine men and women staring at me as I walked around the city. The time came when I should have done the things I said I would have, yet I did nothing. I remained immobile. I started to hate anyone who resembled me; because it was their fault I went through such a horrible experience. Some months after, as I was making my way home from school, walking along the Arno river, I saw an African guy coming towards me. He probably did not even notice me, yet I noticed him. I felt a sense of anger grow bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper inside of me. I wanted to yell at him, in Italian, “E colpa tua che mi tratano cosi! E colpa tua che non mi voglino qui!”* Wait a minute… what am I thinking?

It is then I realized I was thinking in a racist mind frame and that I should not be like those around me, crucifying me, the African guy, the rest of us, for how we look like. After several months I began realizing that people’s ignorance is a crucial part of the way they live and the way they were raised. The problem was neither me nor the others who looked like me; the problem was that, just as my classmate, the insignificant elements of what makes one human receives more awareness than the elements that really count. If a member of the Ku Klux Klan bleeds, is his blood not as red as that of a member of the NAACP if he bleeds? It became clear to me that our inability to accept our similarities, also known as racism, regardless of its context, has plagued the entire universe.

During my college graduation, I had the privilege of having former President Bill Clinton as the commencement speaker. In his humanitarian speech he said, “…the most important thing I learned was that, genetically, all human beings are 99.9 percent the same. That is astonishing. Look at each other. Every difference you can see of gender, skin color, hair color, eye color, height, weight, you name it, everything you can possibly observe about another that seems different is rooted in one-tenth of one percent of your genetic makeup.” Incredible! Imagine how history would re-write itself and how we would redefine ourselves if we valued our similarities instead of our differences…

*translation: "It's your fault I'm being treated like this! It's your fault they don't want me here!"