Please find a heartfelt letter below from a young person in Port Alberni regarding racism:
My name is Heidi (name withheld to protect anonymity) and I am a twelfth grade student at Alberni District Secondary School.
I am writing you this letter to address the issue of Racism. Did you know that there is at the moment more than 250 million people all around the world that suffer from apartheid and or other forms of discrimination? Civil rights are constantly being violated in ways of anti-immigration, legislation, voting, education, genocide, and employment. I have chosen this topic because I myself have experienced racism, I am a mixture of cultures I am Native, Irish, Hawaiian, and Chinese. But the only thing some people see is the color of my skin. And I know that some people are going to hate me with a passion before they even get to know who I am as a person. I have been called many racist slurs by people I don’t know. When I was a little girl I didn’t understand why some people didn’t like me for no apparent reason, I always thought it was something wrong with me but in reality it was something wrong with their perception of me. And this will always happen because some people think they hold power over another race, ethnic group, or color.
People are being separated from one another and have been for generations because of race, ethnic groups, or skin color. I think there should be dinners held and at these dinners there will be people from all ethnicities and everyone will sit have dinner and learn about each ethnicity and learn to be open with one another, maybe this would help to bring down those walls we have built to separate people from…people. Another idea is when children are in there early ages teach them about other nationalities and cultures, teach them to be open minded, teach them to love everyone.
Thank you for reading this letter I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Name Withheld
