"THE JUSTICE WE SEEK BEGINS WITH THE STRUCTURING OF OUR COMMUNITIES"

My experiences in America have been both good and bad. I came here when I was six-years-old, just in time to begin the first grade. At the time, my parents had been here for six years. They were approved to come to America almost immediately after I was born, but due to immigration laws at the time, I could not come with them. My grandmother cared for me during the six years that it took for me to also be approved to come here.

By the time that I arrived in America, my parents were living in a diverse community in Maryland, where they continue to live today. Our city is a "planned community." The city’s founder, James Rouse, had a vision to create a community in which low, middle, and high-income families could live amongst each other, share the same school systems, banks, shopping centers, etc. The structural result was a half-dozen or so smaller communities within a larger city. The overall result was a sense of pride in our neighborhoods and city, and exposure to, tolerance, and friendships with people from many diverse backgrounds.

By high school, I began to hear from my teachers that our community did not represent the real world, and we were in for a rude awakening once we went off to college. Although the college that I attended was only thirty minutes away from the city in which I grew up, for me, my teachers’ predictions were true.

My college was situated in an area segregated by the haves and the have-nots. On one side of my college were the middle to larger-sized homes with immaculate, well-manicured lawns, smooth roads, and a cat or two peaking out a window when you passed by. On the other side of my college were the compact row homes, apartments sitting on top of bodegas, liquor stores, litter, cracked sidewalks, potholes, and a homeless person every few blocks. Just as the neighborhoods were a stark contrast to the other, so too were the people that occupied them. The latter consisted mostly of minorities, and the former, non-minorities. Over the years, I have learned that, unfortunately, this scenario plays out in many areas across America.

The consequences of such division go far beyond the differences in the appearance of the neighborhoods. This division implicates a difference in access to quality healthcare, adequate school systems, parks and recreational areas for children and residents, as well as access to quality grocery stores. The culmination of such division is a vast difference in the quality of life, exposure to crime and disease, and the overall life expectancy between the two groups, along with attitudes of indifference towards those who have less than others.

I have heard many solutions to resolve the inequities between racial groups; however, for me the solution begins with restructuring communities. From my own experience, I believe that communities that encourage and expose their residents to those who are different, and that strive to ensure that vital amenities are accessible to all residents, will foster the tolerance and empathy that all citizens deserve.