A Name? | Teen Ink

A Name?

August 10, 2016
By NurahKL SILVER, Trinity, Florida
NurahKL SILVER, Trinity, Florida
8 articles 0 photos 0 comments

"Twenty-seven, what type of sandwich do you want?""Number 80, you are next up to recieve your driver's license.""Oh my gosh, look at Mrs. Five over here, married to the college board AP tests.""I cannot believe you got a perfect 1600 on the SAT.""This is my daughter and she got a 36 on her ACT, she is a genius.""Now transporting 762 to Auschwitz...." Numbers. We are viewed as numbers. The contemporary public school system does not pay attention to the 10th percentiles. The 2.0 grade point avarages have no hope for resurgence because they are lazy. "Oh, that girl over there got death threats from number 72 on the football team? Well she has three referalls and he was just being a boy, joking around." They define us by the numbers they have created for us. The same numbers that were once used on them; to tell them whether they were competent enough for college or recognition as a person. This way of calling attention to an individual, it is degrading. Degrading in such a way that an entire person, born like you and I, has been stripped of their identity; their name given to them by the ones who love them most, taken away abruptly. I am here to tell them, and to tell you, that you are entitled to your name because you are more than a number. Your name is the beginning and end of your entire being. Your name is the only association you started with and the only association you will be left with long after you are gone. No one has the right to take away this thing, this thing that you paid for in personality and character. This thing that people think of when they are thinking about you. This thing that is you. You are your name. Your name is everything. So do not let them take it. Do not let them transform you into nothing. Do not let them take what is rightfully yours. Fight for your name, for it is you. 



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