All Are Alike Unto God

A personal essay by Chloe Cozzens

This kind of hate will never be healed with more hate. 

Original drawing by Sydney Cannon

I can remember rushing to the bathroom after class to change into my soccer clothes. As nervous as I was, this was the day that I had been waiting for. I hadn’t played soccer at all since we had made the move to Mexico City nearly 2 months earlier. It had been another day of eating lunch by myself, getting laughed at for not understanding my teacher again, and dealing with the countless whisperings and stares as I walked down the halls, but none of that mattered because I was about to reach my escape: soccer. I hurried out of the school and made the half-mile jog across campus until I reached the soccer fields. I approached the gate watching the other four dozen kids my age warming up and went over to the table to check-in, not realizing then that I was the only white kid trying out.

“¿Qué estás haciendo aquí?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish. No hablo español, only inglės.”
“Ah, sí. Sorry, my English no good.” He stared at me for a moment. “You American, no?”
“Yes, I’m American. I’m here for soccer tryouts.”
The coach next to him whispered in his ear as he nodded and turned back to me. 
“Sorry, but we no have room for you. Um, we are lleno…” he paused searching for the words, “how you say, full.”
I stood confused, not knowing what to say as I tried to hold back my tears.
“You can’t try out,” he said as he turned to walk away.

A Sight of Reality in Mexico

I have always lived a pretty comfortable life. Moving every two to three years allowed me to have new experiences and make new friends. But moving to Mexico City when I was just six years old opened my eyes to experiences that I had not yet faced in America. My siblings and I were a part of a handful of white Americans in a predominately Mexican school. Those three years I lived in Mexico were hard. I didn’t realize what was happening at first, it took me a few months. The first couple of weeks at any school were always rough, but somehow this time it felt different. The soccer tryout fiasco was my first glimmer of recognition of what was going on.

That day I ended up sitting in the bleachers watching the other kids condition, perform shooting drills, practice footwork, and scrimmage because my mom wasn’t coming to pick me up until after tryouts. I held back my tears until my mom pulled up to the curb and I saw her grinning from ear to ear through the window.

With a deep breath I tried as best as I could to swallow the lump in my throat and force a weak smile as I climbed into the backseat. But just as moms do, she somehow knew something was wrong. The excitement drained from her face as I recounted the events of my afternoon. She sat there staring at the road saying nothing for a long time. We pulled up to a stop light, she turned around wiping a tear from her cheek. She apologized to me for not being able to play soccer but what she said next surprised me.

Gymnastics…? Seriously? That was her big idea? That was how she was going to fix this?

I said nothing for a long time as she talked up the idea of trying a different sport while we lived here; it could be a “new era” for this time of my life.

I said nothing the hour long car ride through the city back to our house. I reflected on the past 2 months that we had been here as I watched the chaos of the city through my window. It kind of how I felt inside: chaotic.

I was tired of putting on a face to act like I enjoyed living here. I suppressed my tears on my birthday when I didn’t have any friends to invite to a birthday party. I lied to my parents every Sunday when we’d drive home from church telling them about the new “friends” I was making in class. I didn’t dare tell them that I alternated eating lunch by myself in the bathroom and library everyday to escape the teasing that I could barely understand from the kids in my class. It wasn’t till this afternoon that I figured out why.

We pulled in the gate of our house and up into the garage. I fumbled to collect my things and get out of  the car so I could go to my secret place to cry. But before I could open my door my mom turned around and told me something I’ll never forget.

“Chloe, there will be more things in this life that are out of your control than in your control, other people’s actions being one of them. But one thing you will always control is your reaction. Unfair things are going to happen to all of us while we are here just because of the way we look, but you remember to always react in kindness and love. This kind of hate will never be healed with more hate.”

It was hard, but I made sure to live by my mother’s words. One day at a time I forced smiles at the bullies in my class when they’d tease me. But something extraordinary happened. After a while, I didn’t have to force it as much anymore. The teasing started becoming more scarce. The kids in my class stopped calling me names and some of them even started inviting me to sit with them at lunch. I accepted my mom's proposal and joined the gymnastics team, where I made a few more friends. Later in the year there was a little Japanese girl that moved in and joined our class, and then a girl from London. Needless to say we became best friends. 

My years in Mexico are home to some of the most painful, lonely memories that I have. But now I felt a sting that few have experienced. A sting that cuts deeper, beneath the skin. I would not trade that pain for anything else, for it opened my eyes to a part of the world I didn’t know existed, and I now have a small sample of the bitterness of what that world tastes like.

Try on Their Shoes and Walk

When I was a senior in high school I entered a speech competition where I was to recite a ten-minute memorized speech on some aspect of the U.S. Constitution with an emphasis on the duties and obligations of American citizens. At this time Colin Kapernick kneeling during the National Anthem was all over the news and the country was blowing up taking sides on this issue. I wrote my speech on respecting and honoring the flag.

I sought help from my dad, who had just retired from the U.S. Army after twenty-three years of active duty service. He told me that my paper was very one-sided and that I needed to gain a better understanding of this issue from a black person’s point of view. That is when he pointed me to the documentary that changed my life.

The documentary 13th explores the evolution of racism in America as it goes through slavery, Jim Crow, and the modern prison system. It makes the point that racial inequality has evolved into the criminalization of black people because of the “loophole” in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution stating that slavery and involuntary servitude are illegal, “except as a punishment for a crime.”

Up until this point in my life, I thought that I had a good understanding of racism, but I was wrong. Being raised Christian I thought that I had always loved others equally but I hadn’t always stood up for others. I have always had such a deep-rooted love for this country, but I realized I was turning my cheek to the dark realities this country faced and still faces today. 

Spending most of my life in the South I was no stranger to the history of the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. I grew up going to museums about it, visiting the actual sites where history was made, but it never really jumped off the page for me. In other words, it didn’t strike me as real life. I now understood that this level of racial inequality still very much exists today, and I remembered the sting that I felt over a decade earlier. 

I began looking around me to see subtle hints of racial prejudice everywhere. I was most shocked when I noticed it in my own church community. How could a group of people whose lives are centered around loving everyone be putting down those who are different from them? I knew how painful it was to not be accepted and I didn’t realize that this was happening in my own church community.

First, Look in the Mirror

One day I came across the remarks that President Russell M. Nelson, the current prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (which is the church that I attend), gave at the annual NAACP convention in 2019. His remarks were centered on building bridges of love rather than walls of segregation. It moved me to hear God’s living Prophet speak about loving each other regardless of color, beliefs, or opinions. Creating change does start with just one person at a time. Reading his remarks instantly took me back to my mother’s words to me in the car; I will never be able to control others actions but I can always control my reaction. President Nelson asked what steps we can take to ignite change. My answer was my mother’s advice to me: to always react in kindness and love, for hate can only be healed with love.

Just a few months ago we had an entire unit in my LDS Literature class on Race. For one of the class reading assignments we had to read “The Mormon Cross” by Eugene England where he says:

“What can we do? We can get ready for living the higher law, first by working to root out racism in ourselves through getting to know blacks and something of black aspirations and culture. And we can help get Americans ready, black and white, by working honestly and vigorously to overcome the burden of our racist past”

I had never thought much about the problems and prejudices that I had within myself. Before anything can happen we must first get rid of the racism in ourselves. We have to come to understand the minority point of view, try on their shoes and walk. 

To have a reckoning with race we must truly acknowledge the past. The past of ourselves, our families, our communities, and our country. How can you fix the problem if you don't know the problem? As difficult as the past may be, it is what has brought us here today.

For whatever reason, race is embedded in this nation’s founding. Our country has always had a narrative of racial inequality, it’s always been a part of this nation. However, one of the biggest problems in our nation’s history with race is that for a long time people didn’t talk about it. They tried to sweep it under the rug, thinking that it would just go away and fix itself, when in fact it never did and still hasn’t.

To achieve this reckoning we must learn the history. To achieve this reckoning we must evolve from the people who wrote those narratives. To achieve this reckoning we must always leave people better than when we found them. Change occurs one person at a time; what will your reckoning be?

Image Credit: Image 1 is an original drawing by Sydney Cannon

Images 2, 5, & 6 are stock photos from the cite Pexels

Images 3 & 4 are original photos from when I lived in Mexico 

England, Eugene. 1973. "The Mormon Cross." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, no. 1, 78-86.