I vividly remember walking down a crowded street in Manhattan, New York, with my father when I was eight years old. He was excitedly pointing out all of the interesting signs and shops we had never seen before, being from the far-less-bustling Manhattan in Kansas.

Suddenly, three young men cut off our way and shouted horrible profanity and racial slurs at my dad. At the time I wasn’t quite sure what they meant, but their tone and their threatening demeanor made me grip his hand tighter as he pushed me backwards protectively.

I asked him what the word that man had said meant, and what he was pointing at with the wrong finger, but he just smiled and said “It’s nothing, it’s okay.” That was enough assurance for me.

But six years later, after reading the news to find out that a shooting in a town just two hours from the place I call home has killed a man from the same country that my family is from and injured his friend who shares the same name as my father, that assurance isn’t enough anymore.

Witnesses of the Olathe shooting say that the suspect shouted “Get out of my country,” to the victims before taking out his gun. He didn’t know what that man’s life was like. He didn’t think about the fact that his wife was at home, waiting for him to come back from work. All he saw, and all that the men who cornered my dad and me in New York saw, was skin darker than theirs.

This kind of ignorance is one of the most dangerous instigators of violence and destruction in our modern world. It is difficult to comprehend that in 2017, we have made countless strides in a vast number of fields, but we still retain the almost primitive habit of judging someone’s character or intentions based on the way that they appear to be.

Just because we are called the human race doesn’t mean life is a competition where we are divided into teams to fight for superiority. Or rather, if life is a race, then wouldn’t we all be on the same team? Accepting diversity, looking past differences and putting prejudice aside is unfortunately easier to say than it is for humanity to achieve. It may be a pipe dream to envision a world in which hatred is completely extinguished, but that is a future truly worth fighting for.

I hope that there will come a time when people in crowded New York streets smile at each other and comment on how beautiful the weather is. I hope that instead of the color of their skin, that smile is the first thing they see.