There’s this feeling you get when you’re in a room full of people that look nothing like you. Sometimes it’s more subtle and sometimes you feel like you’re naked in front of an audience, and every single person is staring right at you. Racial discrimination comes in many different forms, it’s like a master of disguise. I’ve experienced it most in social settings, as a teenager who grew up mostly in a country foreign to my own.

A large part of our community is still ignorant towards racial discrimination. Of course, I believe most of the time people just don’t think twice about the things they do, like how they walk across the street when they see a construction worker who is dark skinned, or they don’t realise that their standard of beauty generally revolves around eurocentric features. Yes, I could tell you that it’s just built into the culture of the world and that reversing this would take a long time, but people have been saying this for years now. Do you want to be the person who subconsciously judges people based on their race? If not, then start making conscious efforts to change your mindset, because things will never change if we just keep talking.

When I was that 8 year old girl that moved from India to Singapore, I was not prepared for what was to come. I had travelled in the past and went to an international school back home, so it wasn’t like I had never been exposed to so many different kinds of people. If anything I found it fascinating. But, the day I walked into the classroom to start my first day at school, all eyes were on me. I stood up in front of a very diverse class and introduced myself, not knowing what to expect. The footsteps I took into that classroom that day seemed to tighten friend groups and the only person left was another brown kid who didn’t make it into a friend group either, the other brown kid who wasn’t given a chance. It took me months to prove myself to them, and even longer to feel like I belonged, regardless of where I came from.

According to the Harvard T.H Chan website, children of colour face a substantial amount of racial stereotyping from the white adults who work with them. The study talks about what stereotypes the white adults hold about the children that they work with. Would any parent feel safe if they left their child with a person who did not like something about their kid based on their skin? No they wouldn’t, because a child should never have to be insecure about something they had no control over, and should not be judged because of it. The amount of melanin in someone’s skin should never be the talking point of their character, and we should stop looking to their race to judge them.