Uncovering It All

   Imagine this: you’re a four year old who’s a ball of energy, wanting to run around and waste your days playing with those you tolerate. One of your favorite things to do is listen to music, and your family decides to film a video of you lip-singing to a pop song that contains one too many swear words, including the N-word, that really shouldn’t be in a child’s vocabulary. Nonetheless, you have all the words memorized , and smile proudly at the camera in your face as you let the words come out of your mouth. Then, your family decides to post it, which is another problem in itself, but that’s an issue for another day. Now, you can’t read, because again, you’re only four and a literal child. So, fortunately, you can’t understand the comments on the video of you lip singing that went viral telling you all sorts of vile things.    This is really what happened to a four-year-old who was posted in a video on the internet. While she’s lip singing, she mouths the N-word, o...

   I’m Arab. Of course I should know how to pronounce the word “Arab”, right? Well, I guess not, because somehow I was told how to pronounce my OWN race by a non-Arab. And not even that, but he didn’t even know how to speak the Arabic language whatsoever nor could he say the word “habibi” (Arabic word for My Love) properly. If you’re going try educating me on MY language, at least be able to say the most well-known word of it (if I could add an emoji, I would add an eye-roll).       Let me set the scene for you: it was my freshman year of high school. I was standing in line to get a school cookie, that, mind you, is actually the most disgusting cookie I’ve ever eaten. I’m with my two friends and this fellow freshman decides to join us. I already knew him as I occasionally tutored him in math. Somehow, the four of us get to talking about ethnicity. Out of curiosity, this boy asks me what mine is. Now, before I continue, I would like to address the fact ...