Nicole+R’s+Final+AmEx+2015+Speech

Nicole Rockholt Mr. Fitz-Patrick AP United States History 2 June 2105

 "Human"
 I remember just last month, sitting at a table out in the quad, a junior here told me, "Oh you couldn't have had a hard life. You're white, you don't understand". Oh look, another racial slur against white people, tossed around like its nothing. Yet this goes both ways, one truly more than the other. One of my Hispanic friends, also a junior here says that one of the most offensive things someone has ever said about her was “ Oh you wouldn’t have thought ‘insert her name here’ would have been Hispanic. She was one of the smartest people in middle school.” America wants to be a melting pot, when in reality, we cannot melt. We each have our own unique personalities, our own cultures. Many Caucasian Americans chant "you can't tread on us" while they go grinding the Latino and Hispanic to dirt. They have stereotyped a race, a culture... a society, and give them no means to break out of the chains that bind them to their stereotyped lives, based off of where they come from. A huge problem in our society, are the racial slurs thrown around, doing unseen damage. You only stop hurting someone when you see the wound, without a wound to see, this game becomes much more lethal.

 Many of these racial slurs seem to come from statistics, which do not do justice to what is actually tangible, here, what is actually the truth. Statistics and race both SEEM to determine, each individually, how each individual is going to end up and how far they are going in their lives. And when both of these forces join together, race and statistics, it could be a blinding lens that people look through to determine another's worth and ability, but blinding it is. It shows no proof. Numbers mean nothing on defining an individual and race means nothing on defining an individual. I, along with the majority, am living proof that racial stereotypes, do not hold truthful, and neither do the statistics.

 At age thirteen I was told, you're going to end up just like your parents. I'm tired of people telling me what I'm supposed to do,, where I am headed and defining me based off of my past. Based off of the odds, the statistics. I should probably tell you my story. My mom, 18 and pregnant with my sister. My mom, 19 and pregnant with me. My mom, 29 and pregnant with my little sister. The odds were set against my parents, with them being a young unmarried couple and as statistics had shown in 2013, 90% of unmarried couples will break up by their babies teens, and my parents had let the odds get the best of them. 8 years after I was born, my parents got married, three years after that, they divorced, and and two after that, by the time I was thirteen, my mom was an alcoholic and my dad a drug addict. Then came the life of foster care for my sisters and I. Home to home, 4 houses and four different families in 8 months. So don't you DARE tell me I have had it good because I am white. Constantly I wondered, "if I just run away, in this moment, would I ever be found." Constantly I would wonder if I just took those pills, how long I would be waiting until my life faded away. Constantly I thought suicide was an option. Constantly I wondered..."who would be the one to find me".

But then I realized something. Something that saved my life. I can be someone other than what is supposedly destined for me. Statistics show that teenagers do not get adopted and families will not stay together, and the foster children will end up just like their parents. Yet, here I am, I made it through the odds. I lived to today. Adopted with my two sisters into a family of 11. And here I am, in high school, not pregnant, not an alcoholic and the last time I checked, not a drug addict. Here I am holding a 4.2 overall GPA, taking three Ap courses two honors and dedicating myself, my life my future and myself to make a change in people's lives, to save lives. Here I am in an AP class delivering my final speech, because I made it here, after someone told me I was going to be nothing. So let me just say, screw the statistics saying how I am going to end up and and screw the racial slurs holding me to a joyous life because I am white.

Now, speaking for the other races, I may not embody their suffering nor their skin tone, but I embody their spirit, the spirit of wanting to be seen as whole and equal. Cuando me escuchas hablar en español, por favor no me mires y no pienses.. ¿Por qué?. Mírame y trata de entender. (And for those that don't speak Spanish, I said when you hear me speaking Spanish, please don't look at me think why? Look at me and try to understand). Try to understand that stereotypes aren't the person, or their skin. I am not Hispanic, yet speaking their language and being passionate about their culture does not make me "bad" or any less American. It is apparent that I am American, I never get questioned, but when I speak Spanish it seems that I am doing some unlawful sin around people in my family, I am looked at with bewildered eyes, some, yes from amazement that a white girl like me could be speaking rapid Spanish, others loathing that I would represent a culture as such. But why is this so? Their background, their history of drugs, their crumbling economic issues, the stereotypes? We label them 'the lesser because of this'? Over 40,000 Latino/Hispanic children get taken out of school here in the “land of opportunity” and have to work on the field to support their family. It's not because they are lazy or stupid, like some may argue. It is because we make it so hard on them, many are here illegally because of oppressiveness they may have experienced or whatever reason they may have come for, and we give them tests and paperwork that probably thousands here, American born citizens couldn't get through today. This, all in fear of them taking over our society because of what the numbers and statistics say of their racial population growing in America. Yet why should they be working in the fields and not receiving this education because of illegality or other struggles, when they embody the courage, strength, and will to do so? I say, give them education, give them opportunities to get out of their pre-destined path to work in the fields all day because of not receiving an education. Many cannot advance because of our views of them, of the way we perceive their past and their culture, not the way we perceive them as a person. We make their odds, we make the stereotypes. We are the ones who make them suffer. We are the ones who are against them because of their race and the "numbers" supporting our beliefs of them, not the other way around.

 From the very beginning of our lives, many factors are working against us and the odds seem to be either with us or against based off of our race. And yet we have people supporting this. We have people who won't lend a helping hand. We have people who will look the other way, in the suffering of their own brethren. We live in a Darwinist America. Survival of the fittest, where we have many people unwilling to help each other in fear of being the inferior man. We set the odds against each other, and laugh when they can't break free from these odds and stereotypes and you think "yeah, I knew it, I was right all along". No, you just discriminated, oppressed and did injustice towards another human being, towards your brothers. You are the bad in society. You, unlike the others, are actually defining your self worth by your actions, and all over a preconceived ideal of what you think others are because of stereotypes and numbers supporting them. I want you all to know and to remember, if the odds are never in your favor, rethink, rethink of what you want. Don't let racial slurs define you and don't let the numbers get the best of you, and do not BE THE ONE to degrade others with these notions, and not on who they are and what they are capable of. I made it through the worst times of my life while being looked at as different, and many among me have done the same. Although I did make it through, the memories still hurt deep inside and the past will never leave me, but we need not let the past define us. We all have problems and struggles in our lives and we all need to be here to support each other through and through. In my vision of America, I want people to remember, and to know, that WE...we are not a color, we are not a race, we are not a number, we are...human.

Thank you.


 * Cite your sources **

"90 Percent of Unmarried Couples with Babies Will Break up by Baby's Teens: Study." //LifeSiteNews //. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 June 2015.