two talks

I had two well I guess now that i think of it three really great talks today. My roommate made dinner for me and as we were sitting and talking she talked a lot about religious hatred in Turkey. We talked about the divisions of religion and about the different bombing and acts of hatred that have happened in turkey. It blows me away that people following a religion can hate each other so much. Shouldnt the basis of all religions be peace and love?

Then I went out with some other friend tonight and one of the guys that was there is currently studying in San Fransisco. He was telling me about what he noticed about American culture and sadly its the things that I've been noticing here too. For example, one of the first things we talked about was consumerism. he said he was blown away by the massive shopping centers, the costco's and targets everywhere. What was our need to buy so many things? Why is there so much competition? he also talked about the money on technology we spend IE the Iphone, quite honestly i told him i didnt understand it either, i didnt ahve an iphone but enough people i know had ones, and it is common to trade in your phone to get the next newest one all the time. I thought it was intereting that a few hours prior to this discussion, I had made my post about consumerism and the fact that in turkey its not really existent.

Then finally we talked about racism. He obviously looks like he is middle eastern and told me about hte comments people made towards him. Ozlem (my roommate) and i were talking about this earlier too. You look middle easten, yes, most likely you are muslim, but does that make you a terrorist ? NO. Ozlem asked me what i thought about muslims esp after 9/11 she was really heartfelt about what happened but in both of their responses, how can we hold every middle eastern looking person accountable. The guy i talked with tonight told me about the racist comments that were made towards him in San Fran. I was frustrated with my culture. I am frustrated that we hate everyone. There is sooooooo much racism still prevelent in our society. The blacks, the whites, the asians, the somalians, the mexicans. Why cant we look past that. For a country that has so many great minds, why must we have so many close minded people? It frustrates me to think about that. It frustrates me that i recieved comments like "why dont you teach people here how to speak english?" (when i was in america). Why do we have to be one of hte most intolerant places I have traveled to. I go out with people who try really hard to speak in English aroundme. WHy? Its thier country, i should be speaking Turkish. No they try super hard to accomodate me. BUt yet in american I hear very racist comments when someone is speaking Spanish or is even mispronouncing a word. When i go back to the US i think that will be something I really struggle with.