Events That Change Views | Teen Ink

Events That Change Views

September 12, 2014
By Anonymous

I was born in 1998 and came from Mexico when I was 4 (2003) I can’t say that I got discriminated since the discrimination people felt in the early years was 10 times greater. I did not really understand why people got discriminated or why they didn't get all the rights that everyone else had, but until I got older I understood that not everyone agreed with immigrants or non white people coming to America or living here or that not everyone viewed being gay lesbian bisexual etc. to be okay so in their views gays didn't deserve to have the same rights as everyone else.

Mr. K was was born in 1954 and he got to experience many things that happened during that time and the years to come that would make his anger explode by how some people were ignorant. He,s childhood wasn't a rough childhood since his father was a skilled electrician and also was a part of the veterans of foreign wars so he got to travel a lot. Imagine passing by Georgia and South Carolina and being able to see the clear distinction " The poor parts were just black (colored) people lived and the rich parts were just white people lived."

When asked how he felt about gay rights and how they changed over time he said "they didn't affect me directly since I'm not gay, but I do have and have met gay couples and also have had gay friends." He saw how the LGBT community struggled specially gay couples since they did not have the same rights as everyone else, California didn't pass the civil relationship law till later years which gave them almost the same rights as everyone else. In 1994 in the O.J Simpson murders he was at Cal State L.A when " a gay slur came up "it's "okay he's gay"" since one of the persons that had been killed was gay so people thought that it was okay since he was gay. Imagine hearing someone say that it's okay if someone is killed if he's gay, Mr. K’s anger started piling up and he couldn't take it anymore so he got into an argument with the person who had said the slur. He was asked to vacant the property, but he ignored them "I got hauled off by the police, but I got a gay lawyer and it got dismissed thousand dollars later" he silently chuckled.

In 1977 he emigrated back to Germany with his first wife where he saw stuff that would later affect him personally. He explained “My father in law showed me a little red book that had the family background from the past three generations, so they would be able to see that you weren’t Jewish.” He later met a security that had been imprisoned in the concentration camps and saw that he had an imprinted tattoo of his concentration camp number. “It made it personal for me because … in the case of Germany you have a sense of collective guilt that we are all responsible for what happened in world war 2 even though I didn’t live through those years.” “I can’t tolerate discrimination against anybody because I can see myself or people I know getting caught up in that stuff.”

The “Vietnam War” changed his views on what the American dream was he “Did not like what the American government does it just goes off to wars”. “I turned very hostile against the American government.” He said that in his opinion, he is not living the American dream since he doesn’t have a family, he also explained “In my heart, I feel I am German, but I live here and if I had stayed in Germany I wouldn’t have become a math teacher."



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.