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I could have been born as an African-American. My father could have been from Japan. My mother could have been born in Germany. I could have lived all my life up to now in an orphanage in Sudan. My childhood could have been in a home in Pakistan.

But of the roughly 200 countries in which I could have been born, I was born in America, to a Venezuelan father and a Central American mother.

With something as arbitrary as race, it is troubling to me that our society puts so much pressure on ethnicity and nationality. In songs, I hear the N-word being tossed around like the word "and." In airports I see Middle Eastern travelers being searched twice as much as anyone else. And recently I have been witness to the arguments of those who mistake illegal immigration with legal immigration.

Racism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race." Currently, we see people fighting with the belief that their race is superior to others'. And racial slurs have become appallingly common in the American language, yet many of those who use them don't realize the extreme offensiveness of their words. The problem is that many believe one person of a certain race can be an accurate representation of the race itself.

I don't think it is fair for someone to be insulted about something they cannot control. No one ever chooses to be white, black or any other ethnicity. I never chose to be Hispanic. But I accept it and I am proud of it. It upsets me that others choose not to be tolerant of the fact that our country is filled with diversity. We are the country whose best-known political expression is "all men are created equal," though we have yet to match these words with our actions.

We, as a country, have come a long way from the days of slavery and deaths due to racial discrimination, the days when the majority of people believed that their race made them superior to another race. But even today I question whether or not we have learned from the past.

I still believe that we are founded on the principle of equality, though it has taken years for us to progress from our horrible and gruesome past. I hope that we can actually use history to learn from our mistakes — color, race and nationality do not determine the type of person you are.