Idea #6: Art can be Shocking!

A shocking truth that I wanted to explore the idea has to do with the acceptance of race per country and the acceptance of countries per people. My girlfriend Linda and I are an interracial couple with her skin color being brown and her mostly being Mexican and my skin color being white and I’m partially Mexican. Linda was going to go visit Mexico to see some family, I, of course, wanted to travel with her and meet them as well as see the country half of her family was in because I had never been there and heard the beaches were beautiful. My parents would not let me go and were laughing that I even wanted to try to go because they said I would be killed where we were trying to visit. Then I told Linda that I wanted to go with her and she talked to her family who again, thought it would be too dangerous for me to visit because the particular part of Mexico they were visiting was not very friendly to interracial couples nor anyone from America. The thing that was shocking to me was that, when my parents and my girlfriend and I all talked about me wanting to go but not being able to because I’d get murdered, it was a sort of joking / laughing conversation. Even though it’s such a serious issue, that I can’t even visit my girlfriend’s family members in Mexico because I would be causing high risk to my life, we laughed about it and joked around about why I couldn’t go. This, to me, shows our acceptance of Mexico even though it is extremely wrong for me not to be able to visit, we don’t fuss about it and carry on. However, once something happens in America that has to do with racial issues and is much less severe than not even being able to enter the country at the risk of being murdered by cartel, it then becomes the most serious conversation you’ve ever had and “how could America treat people that way”, “America is evil and horrible”, etc… In reality, the racial issues in America are much less severe than other countries such as Mexico for example yet when we talk about the issues in Mexico, we play them down as jokes and accept that that’s just the way it is. When we talk about racial issues in America, instead of downsizing their importance and joking about it, we start to pretend that we live in the worst country in the world and America is built upon racism. In summary, it is really shocking to me that I can’t visit their country without risking my life because they hate me over there, and that is fine and funny yet when someone is the slightest bit mistreated in America, we must revise the entire constitution because America hates color. If you’ve read this far, please don’t be offended by anything I’ve written, I do not dislike Mexico and I still hope to visit, but i’d like for us to be fair and hold each country up to the same standard.