Physical Appearance

There are billions of people living in this world, and that is the most important reason why there is a racial discrimination. This discrimination occurs due to the difference of skin color, religion, language, and even culture.

Back in my home country, there are two groups of people who always seem to discriminate one another. These two groups are the Indonesian natives and the Chinese. Since my skin color is very much different as compared to the Indonesian natives’ I could hardly make friends with them. This was mainly because I always thought that the Indonesians were low-class people just because they are poor; they worked as servants, street sweepers and labors. I believed that this thought applies to most of the other Chinese. The Chinese always think that they are much better off than then dark-skinned Indonesians because the Chinese hold the majority of the business throughout the whole Indonesia although the Chinese population is extremely small in Indonesia. Besides the difference in skin color, I used to think that I would never make friends with the natives because ninety nine percent of them were Moslems.

I began to realize that I was absolutely wrong when I left my home country for Singapore to continue my further studies. There, I was very impressed how the Singaporeans, the Indians and the Malays get along together very well. There is even a racial harmony day held once a year. Since then, I started to treat my surrounding people

equally regardless of their skin color, language, and religion. When I went back to Indonesia, I tried to make friends with the natives. I then realized that they were just the same as the Chinese. I felt very sorry whenever I thought of how I treated my servants and my other Indonesians so badly in the past. I should have treated the Indonesians well since the beginning because Indonesia does not belong to the Chinese; I was only a foreigner there.

Eventually, I have learnt that people in the world are all equal regardless of language, religion, skin color and culture. We should treat one another well because we are all the same in this world, the human beings. I often feel very sad because racial discrimination can even lead to wars. I always hope that people will learn their mistakes like how I did so that racial discrimination no longer exists in the future.

Word Count: 405