Happiness can exist only in acceptance – George Orwell

MARYSVILLE – Kierra Green and Eden Au Nguyen are two student leaders at Marysville Getchell High School.

But they still have had to deal with racism.

“Somebody said the ’n’ word in my psychology class,” Green said Friday after the school’s annual ceremony to honor Martin Luther King Jr. “It’s like they think they have this power over you.”

Green and Nguyen led the assembly as part of the school’s leadership class. “We didn’t want it to be fluffy. We wanted it to be meaningful,” Nguyen said.

They, and other students, were shown in a video where kids talked about racist things that have happened to them. The video starts with pieces of speeches by MLK and actor Morgan Freeman.

In the video, Green talked about the black culture being very popular in making up the overall pop culture. But she feels blacks are exploited that way because people overall are blind to their problems yet take the benefits.

Nguyen said she feels discrimination because people just expect her to excel because she is Asian. “I’m not acknowledged for my effort,” she said, because people think it comes easy for her.

Green said racism may “not be as upfront as it was in the ’60s,” but it’s here nonetheless.

She said when she was younger she was told she was not pretty because she is black, and they wouldn’t be her friend. Someone even said something about “rolling in dirt.”

Nguyen said people would make fun of her eyes, and mock her about “eating your dog.”

She said she sometimes uses self-deprecating humor, but “If you don’t laugh with them they say you’re being too sensitive.”

They agreed the issue of being belittled is hard to talk about. They just want to be accepted as people.

During the assembly itself, Ryan Brown of LINC NW was one of the speakers. That nonprofit community development organization works with people and groups to lead community change.

Brown talked about MLK’s “I had a dream” speech that was 55 years ago, and that slavery was abolished 100 years before that, but, “We are still fighting the same problem.”

Racism can end. “The whole world can change. It starts with you,” he said.

Brown said we hear a lot in the world today that you only have to worry about yourself. “But that’s not true. You’re part of the problem” if you believe that, he added, adding people need to care about others, too.

Brown said there are students at MG who are “terrified of what you might say. They deserve better.”

He added that if you have racist friends, you need to “step away from that relationship. You have an opportunity to make that change.”