Ignorance and Darth Vader

Hi Everyone,

I bet you all notice that my blog looks a little different. Well thanks to my friend who shared a few sites with me I was able to find a pretty layout and a few cool

graphics to add to my blog. I hope you guys like it.

I want to share a story with you that happened to yesterday. I get picked up after school every day in the front parking lot of my school and I usually sit outside at a table with five other people. Two out of the five are Hispanic, one is African American and the two others like me, are Caucasian. We all get along really well and really like one another.

However yesterday a boy; we will call him Racist and Ignorant Freshman or R.I.F, came by our table with two friends of his. All three of them stood beside our table while my friend (we will call him Bob) was on the phone with his mom, talking in Spanish to her.

Well R.I.F thought it would be funny to start saying things in Spanish while my friend talked on the phone. R.I.F would yell out "No Taco Bell! Me want taco. Si! Si!"

First let me say that racism is never okay. But to add to this, it was not like Bob and R.I.F were even friends where Bob would know that the kid was joking. It was clear to all of us sitting at that table that R.I.F was indeed racist.
So I looked across the table to my other friend who was also Hispanic, and I could tell it was bothering her. So I said as loudly as I could; "Don't you just hate racist people?" He either didn't hear or didn't care. I think it was most likely the latter. R.I.F keep yelling as Bob covered one ear, trying to be able to hear his mom on the other line.

I had had enough of it and I could tell that everyone else at the table was growing uncomfortable. So I turned to R.I.F and told him "You need to shut up." In which I got the response: "What did you say to me?"
"You heard me. I said shut up. You're being racist." I retorted as the kid moved around the table to come stand beside me. By now everyone was quiet, including Bob who had hung up the phone.
"I was talking to my friends." R.I.F lied.
"Oh really, that's why you were looking directly at my friend as you made fun of his accent while he talked to his mom on the phone in Spanish?"
"I'm fluent in Spanish. I'm in Spanish 3- 4." 

I wanted to ask him: 'What does that have to do with anything?!' Instead I gave him the sweetest smile I could muster up and replied "Good for you, you racist." This got the response of:
"Yea ok, well you sound like Darth Vader."
That got me. While I can stand up for others being made fun of, when someone makes fun of me; it immediately stops me cold in my tracks. I had just taken this kid for some racist, but I realized that he was much worse than that. He was not only racist, he was an ignorant know-it-all who knew nothing.
"Wow. Never heard that one before. But just so you know, I had open heart surgery and was on ventilator. My vocal cords were paralyzed as I fought to live. That's why my voice is this way." I told him. I kept my emotions at bay as best as I could, but I could feel and hear my voice quaking a bit.
"Calm down." R.I.F tells me. Before I could say anything to him in response my friend who was sitting beside who was African American turned around and yelled at him.
"NO, you need to shut up! You are making fun of a girl who almost died! You're racist and need to go away."
"I have a right to be here, I'm being picked up by my parents." R.I.F countered back.
"Yea, well no one likes you because you're racist." My friend fired back, and then a few other people joined in to tell him how they felt. Soon after that R.I.F finally did "shut up." like I told him to.

My sister came to pick me up just seconds after that and as I stood up to walk to my car, my friend Bob turned to me and told me, "Thank you Becca." And that was when I smiled and told him that it was no problem. It was then that R.I.F's words could no longer hurt me. I knew that R.I.F and others like him had no power as long as we all stood up against them. His words at first hurt me, but at that very moment I remembered why I had stood up to him in the first place, because it was the right thing to do.

People will try to tear you down for doing what is right, but you still need to do what is right.

Love,
Becca