In my travels around the world, I have met many interesting people and confronted many difficult situations. Racism is one of the worst things I've had to deal with.

While I have never lived in or visited India, I have lived in Asia and other countries. I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, USA. From there I went to Chicago for three years, and back again to Seattle for a year. Then I lived in Vienna, Austria for 2 years. After returning again to Seattle for a couple years, I lived in Siberia, north of Mongolia for over 6 years. Then I moved to South Bend, Indiana, USA for a year, to central Pennsylvania, for a couple years. I moved to Philadelphia a year and a half ago and then spent over half a year in Seoul, South Korea last year, before returning again to Philadelphia.

I have a white, Protestant middle-class upbringing, and was raised in the suburbs. In my schools there were almost no minorities, although I became interested in international things pretty early. I studied French starting when I was 14 and one of my best friends in high school was a Swedish exchange student.

The summer after I graduated from high school, before entering college, I went to Florida to housesit for a relative. I found a job there at a pizza restaurant. I became very frustrated there because I felt like the African American customers didn't accept me. One waiter who could "jive" with them, knew their lingo and the like, was liked by them. So that was frustrating.

When I went to Chicago, I also worked in another branch of that same pizza restaurant. Working with me were people from all kinds of backgrounds, including African-Americans, a Jew, a couple Lebanese, a Bulgarian girl, a marxist, and a satanist. I thought we all got along really well. I also had a good friend who was of African descent from Brazil. So I didn't feel any of those tensions I'd felt in Florida, and it was fine.

Last year in Seoul, South Korea, this issue of race relations came up again. I was involved with an anarchist alternative education project a bit and one time we had some people come in and talk to us about foreign workers in the factories, how they're treated and the laws. They have a union and shared about their efforts. It was really pretty awful what they have to put up with. Also, I personally felt it was difficult being a foreigner in Korea too. I know as far as being foreign is concerned, I was probably treated better than some, because being American and white was better than being something else. Many foreigners there complain about this, so it wasn't just me.

Here in Philadelphia, the politics are a lot different than in Chicago. Chicago has a long history of tense racial relations, even if I didn't personally experience it. But I haven't really heard or read anything like that about Philadelphia. In fact, Philadelphia is a center for Quakerism, which was a leading and early force against slavery in the United States. But here I feel like there is a strong separation between the races. They don't seem to mix much here and it seems like they just help out people from their own race, even sometimes to the detriment of people from another race. To be specific, memberships and hiring are situations where this might happen.

When I lived in Russia I didn't really come across racism too much. On the one hand people are pretty mixed up and intermarry, having been from all the different republics and encouraged to settle Siberia. But we did have some people from the Caucuses and every once in a while I heard derogatory remarks about them. They were mostly refugees from the fighting in their homeland and had come to Bratsk with next to nothing by way of possessions. But one of my best friends had Azerbaijani partners in her business and they were always over. They got along great.

Somehow we've got to get past this racial thing and learn to accept each other just as who we are. Sometimes there are just individuals who have racial sentiments. But when it seems to be cultural or systemic it's hard to deal with. It's very difficult, I find, as an individual to break down such walls. One can do so with specific individuals as you develop a relationship, such as with neighbors or coworkers. But it just seems like a small drop in the bucket if it's really a systemic or cultural problem. Building bridges should be done on a wider scale to make a bigger change. Racism has many faces and is expressed somewhat differently in different places, but it's bad no matter how it appears.