The Freedom Writers Diary - Erin Gruwell [41]
As Zlata was speaking in front of the people from Croatia, they were all nodding their heads. “Yes, yes,” they would say. She spoke about all of the injustices that one must go through for a simple label or belief. She mentioned her experience as a fourteen-year-old growing up in war-torn Bosnia. How hard it was for her to lose friends because of the way they looked, or what they believed in. At this point, we were the ones nodding our heads.
There is one thing that really stands out in my mind from that night, however. As she was answering questions, a couple of adults asked her what ethnicity she was, Croatian? Muslim? Serbian? I was upset that instead of getting the message that she was trying to convey, they were too preoccupied with what nationality she was. Were these the same adults that preached how wrong racism and discrimination are? Were these the same people that a minute ago agreed that we shouldn’t care about labels? Zlata looked around, stared at us, and simply said, “I’m a human being.”
That’s exactly what we all are. We spend so much time trying to figure out what race a person is when we could just get to know them as individuals. I felt like answering their question with a question. Does it matter? Will it make a difference if she is Croatian, Muslim, Serbian?
She taught me the most valuable lesson that anybody could ever have and to think that she is only fifteen! Ever since that day I’ve tried not to accept society’s labels, but to fight against them.
I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a “label” than of being a human being, that’s the way most of us were taught. Since the day we enter this world we were a label, a number, a statistic, that’s just the way it is. Now if you ask me what race I am, like Zlata, I’ll simply say, “I’m a human being.”
Diary 48
Dear Diary,
Today I went to the Croatian Hall with Zlata and met a little boy named Tony who lived a nightmare because he is Croatian. One night while he was asleep, Serbian soldiers came into his home and shot him in his face; at point-blank range. A Bosnian woman living in L.A. sponsored Tony’s trip to the United States to have his jaw reconstructed. When we met him, he had only a medal plate holding his jaw together.
When I saw Tony, I was grateful my family made it out of Peru before we were harmed—or worse, killed. I thought of my three-year-old brother, and pictured him standing in Tony’s place, telling this ghastly story. Like the life of my family, Tony’s life has been permanently altered by the terror of war. He was a survivor of ethnic cleansing; we survived a revolution that turned into terrorism. Even though the Bosnian war was one of ethnicity and religion, it was just as senseless as the terrorism that ransacked my country. It forced many to leave behind their homes, and their lives.
Although the terrorist struggle in Peru started as a good cause, it turned many people’s lives into a nightmare. Just walking by a parked car, you couldn’t help wondering if there was a bomb hidden in its trunk. As you passed, you wondered if it was going to explode in your face.
I remember my dad saying, “Everything will turn out OK. In the United States. there are more opportunities, better jobs, and no terrorism.” When my Dad said that I didn’t really understand what it meant. I was only ten. I only thought about homework, food, TV, and going outside to play with my friends.
I’d been to the U.S. before to visit family, but never thought I would end up living there. Four weeks after my dad told us we were moving, my grandmother called for us. My dad went to the American Embassy to take care of the paperwork for our green cards. We would get our social security numbers and green cards three months after our arrival in the States.
Three weeks before flying to the U.S., terrorists blew up the house next to mine. The explosion woke everyone in the neighborhood. My eyes snapped open as a wave