I write to you as one of you. I don’t know you. I don’t know which part of what I want to tell you is applicable to you. All I ask is that you take five minutes out of your scrolling to just read what I have to say. For a large portion of both of our lives we have felt like we have been looked at differently, we look at ourselves and look for things that we think are wrong. This isn’t a post about body positivity in which I am going to tell you that you are perfect the way you are. Because you are not. The same way you look at yourself and feel bad because you feel ashamed that people look at you and see what you see, you have made someone feel like that at least once. When I was eight years old, the movie Rise of the Guardians had just released. I went to watch it with a group of friends accompanied by my mother, on our way back we all concluded and fought over who was the tooth fairy in our group. One girl looked at me and said the tooth fairy isn’t fat, I replied saying that she isn’t black either. That is messed up, isn’t it? What was going on in an eight-year old’s mind that she thinks that just because of someone’s skin tone they can’t be a “good” cartoon character. It is something that has been ingrained into us ever since we are children. The caste system, the racism, the xenophobia, the anti-semitism, it all just adds up to one thing: Bias. The worst part is that you have no power over how someone sees you. You can’t change yourself, but you can help change the way someone looks at people. I don’t expect you to read this letter and not be racist anymore or not have bias. You will never stop being biased because it is ingrained in you, but what I do want is a world where you help me by writing more of these letters, showing people that what we are doing is messed up. This isn’t “Dear White People” versioned letter because there isn’t a single race that has never gone through any kind of racism. I am not going to use big words like “Institutionalized systematic racism” and expect you to understand what that means. All I ask is that you acknowledge its existence. Take time to recognize what you are doing. The earth is estimated to end in another 500 million years, is being a bad species really what we want to be remembered as? Yes, we don’t eat our own, but we morally degrade them to the extent that some of them kill themselves, over something as stupid as the melanin content in their body. People with cancer get less discriminated against than people whose skin tone is different. Is it so hard to be respectful? Is it so hard not to call an Asian “Chinki”, a black person “nigg*r”, any Spanish speaking person “puta”? Is it so hard to accept that it is wrong for you to be using those words in the first place? When we were kids, our parent teach us not to verbally abuse but isn’t it time we teach our children that these are more derogatory than those abuses? These words cause riots and deaths, not the other ones that we are not allowed to say. It is not a matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of principal. How you use that freedom without violating someone else’s conscience and sense of identity. It is not hard to not be racist. It is not hard to stop. It is not hard to realize that you are wrong. Rather than fighting a losing battle why not accept the change? What are you trying to prove by not acknowledging people’s fights for equality? What are you trying to do by saying all lives matter when the black ones are being attacked? Nobody is saying the word “Only” anywhere, when a certain group needs the help don’t stand there and defend yourself when you aren’t the one under threat and oppression. Accept people’s oppression is has to end, stand up for yourself and others, just be a good person. I repeat, the oppression is not over, but it has to end so we aren’t equal yet. The only way we will ever be equal is when every single one of puts their foot down and doesn’t look at another person’s background or looks but them as a whole. It’s not impossible, It’s not a fantasy. It’s just taking longer than expected to become a reality.