This I Believe: All Humans Are Created Equal

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Senior Destinee Turner is a movie collector, a published poet, a black belt, and is related to Al Capone. She is also a proud member of the Gay Straight Alliance and Black Voices. Speaking about her personal experience was hard, but Turner was glad she had the chance to express her feelings and beliefs about equality. “I am the ultimate minority. Being black, gay, and a woman, I have never been treated equally, and it’s something I strive for,” Turner says about why she chose her topic.  After high school, she plans to study child psychiatry at the University of Arizona. 

I believe that all humans are created equal. Equality is something we as humans have struggled with for years. It’s written in the constitution, yet it remains a controversy in everyday life. With everything that is happening around the world now (including the Black Lives Matter movement and the Transgender Rights movement) proves that since tragedies like the Holocaust, slavery and segregation, the equality of humans has greatly improved. We are on the right track, but we have yet to finish the race.

I grew up as the ultimate minority. I didn’t know that being bi-racial or a girl could ever make me lesser than another being. In the household and community I grew up in, with a white and Hispanic mother and a black father, I was never taught prejudice. It was when I came to terms with my own sexuality and came out as a lesbian that everything changed.

I found it interesting that as soon as everyone found out I was gay, I received more male attention than I ever had in my entire life. Guys found it amusing to see who could “turn me out”, and for some reason, even that did not affect me. That was just ignorance in my eyes. And ignorance is different from prejudice. However, I began to see it more when people started saying things like “If you’re gay than why do you dress like a girl?” or “You’re too pretty to be gay.” Can somebody tell me how, me being gay has anything to do with how pretty I am? Are gay people not pretty? You learn something new every day. But it wasn’t until a friend of mine, a boy, locked me in his bedroom and tried to force himself on me…. because once I “had him” I wouldn’t want to be gay anymore.

I got out of the room, but I had a bruised knee. He was bruised in a few places too. And unfortunately for him, I was still gay. I was still gay and appalled by the type of people who live in this world. There’s so many different reasons why people discriminate. Whether its race, sexuality, social class and/or so much more, equality issues are still alive and well. White, Black, Rich or Gay, on the inside all humans are the same and beautiful.

If we, as people, stopped judging people so much on what they look like, who they choose to love, or whether they are rich or poor, the world would be a much more wonderful and peaceful place. This I believe.