A Learning Experience

“Always stand up for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone.” -Unknown

I had the wonderful opportunity to go and travel from New York to the Nation's Capital and everything in between. This was an all expense paid trip, which I had to earn a spot for as did everyone else who was able to go on this trip. Total there was about 130 of us give or take a few. That meant that there was a giant mixing pot of people. More specifically there were people from Texas, Michigan, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, Iowa, West Virginia, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and even the Netherlands. I was expecting to learn a lot about the historic district of the United States and about other people's cultures on this trip. While I was able to immerse myself in those things, I also learned that we still have a lot of developing to do as an American society.

This trip was the opportunity of a lifetime for anyone, especially for someone like me who would’ve never been able to go to most of these places otherwise. I would not have traded this opportunity for the world because I had such an amazing time. However, like anything in life, with the good comes the bad, and the bad is what shows your true colors.

I am a colored female, one of the handful which were fortunate to go on this trip. There were some people who came from very, very different walks of life who held very different view points from me. One instance of this would be while on the bus, I was sitting there minding my own beeswax when I heard someone make a joke about going to sit on the back of the bus. And the one thing that bothered me the most about that would be that the people he told the joke to thought it was funny and no one seemed to find anything wrong with what he said. I wanted to say something, something about how there is nothing funny about sitting on the back of the bus because it is obvious what it insinuates, but in the end, I just sat in my seat and listened...astounded.

Moving on, there was one other thing that kind of set me over the edge. While in of the gift shops, I heard these two guys talking about buying a confederate flag. At first I figured that maybe they were joking like some of their friends were before, however after, a few minutes I realized that they were not. I guess they saw me looking at them funny because we began to have a conversation. They went on to say that it wasn’t about hate it was about heritage. I asked them what did they mean “it wasn’t hate”. All one of them could say was that it wasn’t, repeatedly. I rephrased the question and asked them again, “What do you mean it doesn’t represent hate? The confederates in the civil war were not only fighting to have a land of their own, they were fighting to have a country of their own where it was perfectly okay for people to have and own slaves. So yes to me, a colored person, the Confederate flag represents hate.” They both stood and stared at me like they had seen a ghost, and the only thing that the argumentative one could conjure to come out of his mouth was, “Let’s just agree to disagree” and they walked away. I’m not going to lie, I was proud of myself. After all of the foolishness that I overheard and witnessed on this trip, it felt good to finally stand up for something that I believed in.

I’m not usually the one just to pick a fight with someone, but these dudes were being extremely ignorant with their “non-hate” comments and “Make America Great Again” shirts and hats on. If I didn’t say it, who would’ve?

The moral of all of this would be that I was able to experience first hand the current state of the mindset of my generation around the world. I’m usually a pretty positive person, however this time I can’t say I’m as hopeful for my generation as I was before this trip.

What do you think? Do you think that the generations will get better or worse as the years go on? What would you’ve done if you were in my situation? Let me know your opinion in in the comment section below!