Doesn't matter if you're Black or White???

Many of us have heard this song by Michael Jackson... there's a line in it which says : doesn't matter if you're black or white.... I wish most people would follow this..
My blog post is about a very painful topic... Discrimination.
There are several types of discrimination: gender, age, status, caste, and several more. I don't claim to know about all of this. But i do know of one kind of discrimination; racial discrimination, or what i used to know as, color discrimination... Picture this:
A girl in her fourth grade.. not too big to know too much of a difference between race, cultures, etc. Someone who's best friend would be the one who shared her lunch with her, or maybe the one who came with her cuz she had to go talk to a very scary teacher, or walked with her through a corridor to go to the library; anything. She has several classmates, male and female, who were of different nationalities (thai, chinese, japanese, american, indian) and different status, but more or less of the "same" color, or a "better" color than them; barring the few "unlucky ones" who had a darker shade of skin.
Have you ever played those "inch pinch" or "touch thou not" games, where if someone touches something he/she gets "dirty" until he/she touches another person.... and the chain goes on until a certain kind of a chant is said and everybody gets "clean."
When they (the girl's classmates) used to play these games, the "dirty" object would generally be the teacher's desk, or maybe the trash can; but one day, one of them found a very amusing "dirty object".... the girl. The girl, her desk, her shelf at the back of the classroom, her belongings... whoever touched any of her things or her, they were dirty or contaminated (and almost the whole class used to play the game). And they simply wouldn't stop playing it throughout the day. It just kept going on and on.. the whole day.. people sitting next to her moved their desks away from, and bags were separated out... Her friends, though they found this amusing at first, stopped after awhile, but the rest of the class just kept going
You'd say, so what.. they're just bullying a random girl, it can happen to anyone. The girl thought the same thing too (though in a different manner or context as she was too young for it). And so she went away home.... didn't say anything to her mom and spent the evening like she spent any other.
But, this mentality of her classmates continued (though things didn't happen everyday, they happened pretty often).... there were people who would pretend to faint when she passed them cause apparently she smelled of a different color... in their words.. she smelled "black"... and so this kept going. The girl kept taking it.. without a word to anybody.. quietly. She wouldn't say anything to her mom.... and she just learned to accept it and thought "it just happens to everyone, I'm not the only one. There's no reason for me to be upset."
So it went on like that and she finished her fourth grade and moved to 5th grade. Here was when it all became worse. The comments were more open.. the actions more repulsive. And the worst part was that the teacher knew. And did nothing about it, though she was of the "same color" as the girl.
For them it was amusement. For the girl it was trauma... Everyday she became more withdrawn to herself, she started becoming scared of talking to people in her class. Her confidence just crashed down to the lowest levels and her self-esteem could be counted as negative... She started losing grades, she was terrified of public speaking... and she thought that everybody around her didn't like her, cuz she was stupid or dumb. She thought she didn't have any talent and was not capable of anything.. This is what it did to her... This is what a few people's idea of fun did to a girl...
Then came 6th grade... and the Idol of her life... the person she looks up to till date changed everything. He was a nice, retired, fat, American military man. He put a stop to all the rubbish that was done to her. He showed those people how disgusting they were being to her. And people learned. Those horrible things stopped happening.
Her English was good.. especially her spelling and vocabulary... so he enhanced the quality in her.. he would sit and talk to her for hours during breaks... so that he could understand her.. He literally saved her from drowning even more than she had already drowned.
After that.. her grades started looking up. She started making lots of friends. During later stages, some of her closest friends understood her shortcomings and tried to help her overcome it (one of her friends simply sent her alone onto the stage to say a prayer in front of around 200-300 people, to help her overcome the fear. At that time the girl was furious.. she now understands what her friend was trying to do)
She was happier.. much happier than before.
But those two years left a great impact on her... It took her many years after that to overcome the insecurity about being "good-for-nothing," about people not liking her.. about she not being of any significance, a burden to everyone around her...
Her wounds still run deep, though she has overcome all the insecurities she had... Such things are never forgotten.
She knows for a fact that.. if that one teacher didn't put a stop to all that... and didn't show her that she was good at something and that people cared for her... Goodness knows what would have happened to her...

This hasn't only happened with her. Though things came visibly to an end after her 6th grade, many people around the girl still held the same mentality... And its not a new thing to happen to people.. It happens all the time...
Only the people who are discriminating (in anyway) should realize the impact and the trauma that it can inflict.
This girl reacted in this way.. But there are a million other ways people react to all this... This is how lots of hatred comes up...