At twelve years old, I tasted the bitterness of discrimination for the first time. I was eating at Whole Foods in Boston, Massachusetts, speaking to my mother in our native tongue of Spanish, when a woman filling her plate next to us spat “foreigners” and walked away. 

While I know that what I experienced is true discrimination, the term “racism” is used very loosely in today’s society. 

Racism, by definition, is the prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. In this day and age, everything embodies racism. It is everywhere we look: on ads for blacks only dating websites, on black TV networks, on the posters waved at recent protests, and on the lips of our very own president. What truly constitutes prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism? 

As the daughter of two Colombian immigrants, the color of my skin is different than the majority of those around me. I have never felt as though my lighter skinned peers asserted their “superiority” on me. As a matter of fact, the one time I have ever been discriminated against was by an African American woman. 

The notion that all racists are white is inaccurate. Racists, like all criminals and others with closed mindsets, come in all shapes and colors. Racism can be quiet or it can ring loud in the ears of those being affected by it. It can be something as simple as a look or it can be as bold as the couple who tormented an eight year old African American boy at his birthday party by waving a Confederate flag last week. 

How do we stop racism? In the great words of Morgan Freeman: “stop talking about it.”