Racism is still alive and brewing in the hearts of men and women who feel superior or less superior than one another based on the color of their skin.

Too often we encounter racist propaganda in our day to day, that instead of racism dying, we have become desensitized.

With major cases like the Treyvon Martin or Mike Brown murders, that have quite arguably rocked the nation at its core, it’s hard to ignore the fact that race still divides our nation. Instead we, as a nation, perpetuate the stereotypes of our minorities by acting ignorant to the facts that are self-evident.

I never knew what racial profiling was until I experienced it firsthand. I was victim to police brutality and witness to it, based on racial tensions.

I am a mixed race person of Hispanic and Caucasian origins.

Being half white, looking white, and speaking with white people, I have encountered the double standard that every race holds. I have also had the other half of my race, Hispanics, talk about the “gringa” (slang for white girl) in Spanish. I listen, marveling at the fact that I can comprehend everything being said.

“Tu sabes pero no hablamos” (I understand but don’t speak) is usually what I say if I hear anything offensive. It’s just the point that racism is everywhere, even in Kern County, or especially in the segregated city of Bakersfield.

Not only in Bakersfield is there a division of race, because race and class divide every metropolitan area.

Here in my hometown, I can remember as a child that African-Americans lived mostly in the southwest, Mexicans in the east and white people populating the west and north.

Oildale, still a predominately white-populated area, was high for crimes against minorities. While being labeled as “white trash” people have had a bad representation that has perpetrated the feeling that African-Americans weren’t welcome.

In contrast, Rosedale or Stockdale areas were once predominately white, but the richer people of the race.

The issues of race and class can hit home, regardless of the city you live in.

This year has held the nation by its divide of race in numerous cases, monumental changes in gender and religious foregrounds, and will continue to divide the thin boundary lines of race in the background as a national issue

We need more leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. who hoped to unite in his fight against the race issues of his time period. We simply have no single power that has taken the reigns of leadership, especially when the job would entail strenuous circumstances.

Implementation of cameras on police officers and their cars, along with the boom of novice video makers has given testimony to the old stories of the past, only now we can see and hear for ourselves how race still plays a huge part in the world as we know it.

The facts remain that issues of racism are too much when even in 2014 African-Americans are found hanging from a tree. What else can motivate such evilness other than the hate that will never die as long as the racist groups like the KKK still exists?

The racist people are not blatant in their disregard, but there will always remain one person in any race that can mess it up for the rest.

We are all the same, and race should not still be a factor of American life in 2014; sadly, it remains until we all learn a greater level of peace. To not just deal with people of all races, but to accept and coexist in equality is our only weapon against racism.