Race Card Reflection

" No, holocaust jokes are not funny." I went to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC my senior year of high school. While I was there I had the unfortunate experience of being stuck behind a group of individuals who were either in 8th or 9th grade. The group was of various races and the entire time they were there they were making anti-semantic jokes and laughing at the chilling images. I found this incredibly disrespectful, not only because I am partially Jewish, but because I feel that it is wrong for them to laugh at something so awful, especially in a place that was built to honor survivors and remember those who were lost. Race is mostly a construct of culture and society rather than a biological mechanism. While individuals may have different skin pigmentation, their language, ideals, …show more content…
There were some statements that I agreed with upon just reading them and without much thought, there were some that required more thought, others that I felt that I couldn 't agree with, and yet others that I honestly found offensive. However, while reading the various race cards I reminded myself that whether I agree with a statement or not each reflects another person 's ideas or interpretation of events. It would be ethnocentric for me to label an individual 's statement as wrong when I do not completely understand the reasons for their beliefs and I have not shared their experience. One trend that I noticed among the statements was a general consensus from the majority that racism is a problem. Another trend that I noticed is that prejudice extends beyond racial boundaries. Not everyone agrees on how race should be defined or what it actually means; nevertheless, all people seem to have some concept of race, but the majority feel as though race shouldn 't matter, and that how a person is treated should be based on their character rather than their racial and ethnic