Transgender Issues In Let's Talk About Race By Julius Lester

Transgender The social justice topic I have chosen to work on is transgender. The transgender community faces much discrimination and adversity. With this group of people, people do not accept or even understand the concept of being transgender. People do not understand that transgender people face problems with gender identity. They are born into one gender, but they feel like the other gender. People feel like they were born into the wrong body, so they make efforts to transform into the gender they feel like and want to be. The transgender community faces discrimination in the work place. They are often hired and fired for being transgender. They are not accepted for who they are. There are also issues revolving around bathroom. North …show more content…
This children’s book talks about how everyone has a story of who they are, but race is part of every story. He states that a part of everyone’s story people say “my race is better than your race.” However, even though we are different based on race or anything in fact like gender or religion, we all are made with “the same hard bones.” He makes the statement that we are all the same under our skins, we are the same people. We look alike if we don’t have our skin because we are all made of the same bones. Race and skin color doesn’t matter when our skin isn’t on. Race doesn’t make you who you are. It is a part of you, but it is not who are as a person. People are more than a color. On the very last page Lester states, “I’ll take off my skin. Will you take off yours?” This is an extremely powerful book about race. We are all the same, but we don’t realize that we are. People are too concerned with the color of skin rather than getting to know people. The color of our skin does not define us and it shouldn’t be like that in our society. We are all people and like Lester said, we are all the same under our skins. We are made of the same hard bones. He challenges us at the end to take off our skins like he will. He challenges us to stop being so concerned with skin color and to start getting to know each other’s stories. I am more than willing to accept this challenge and more people need to