Dear Next President,

I would like to inform you with a topic that has been an issue for many years now and that would be racial discrimination in this country. As you know, racial discrimination is when one treats another insignificantly by the color of their skin, nationality, or ethnic origin.

In this letter I am going to mention my opinions about racial discrimination, reasons to why those are my opinions, and my evidence to help me. For starters, what is your opinion on racial discrimination and why? Like I mentioned before, this topic has been an issue for many years, but it has been talked about a lot more recently. Nowadays, there has been more and more news such as police brutality which connects with racial discrimination. "Unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire," there is a lot of evidence that supports my case and many others who agree, such as Washington Post, which is where the quote from earlier was cited.

Here is the story: On the news, at 10:57 AM, August 23, 2016 there was an incident that included an officer who mistook a homeowner for a robber. The story behind it is that a woman, the wife to the homeowner, was being carjacked by an African American 18 - 19 year old male in her driveway. The man doing the robbing also supposedly had a gun. When she went inside to tell her husband, an African American man, he told her to contact the police. He then went outside with a weapon. This happened to be the exact time the police officers got there. So, when the policemen showed up, they saw a weapon and shot at him. Later finding out that that was the homeowner, he was sent to the hospital with serious injuries.

I understand that the man did come outside with a weapon which is why the police most likely shot him, but was there a conversation in between? And if so why would the police officer shoot? There are many reasons to why he shouldn’t have, but there are others to why he did. Maybe the police officer was nervous that the black male was holding a weapon? Maybe the officer found it as a threat before consulting with the male? No matter the reason, these types of problems occur more and more without explanation to why racial discrimination is happening today.

There are ways that we can prevent this from happening, but it would have to be for the next generation. What I mean is we can teach the new children that what is happening is wrong and how we should see less of it. Ways we can do that is by having a class for the students to teach them about racial discrimination or we can have it as an elective which makes it their choice to take the class. Other option is that we can make it be a topic for the English teachers at schools, so that we can still teach the kids at a young age. You can do so much with the power that you have so why not show kids right from wrong by informing them about this topic and see how life changing it is for them.

In conclusion, racial discriminations is not a fun topic, but has to be dealt with at one point or another especially if it cost lives. Why wait? Change people’s point of views and show the world of what our country has become of race. Inform others of what has and what will happen because of discrimination. Thank you for your time.

Katie M. Carbone