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I wonder why people only talk about African American people and white people when they talk about civil rights in America. What about people from other countries, races and cultures that are also American? They also have civil rights issues and they are very much the same as the ones Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to deal with. People in America need to think about everyone's civil rights issues, here in the USA and around the world.
I am Chinese and I am also American. I was born in Maoming, China and abandoned when I was two hours old. I was abandoned because of the One Child Policy in China.
China has the largest population of any country in the world. China has six times the population of America. To make sure the people of China had enough food to eat and space to live in, the government of China decided that every family could only have one child. The problem is that Chinese culture values boys more than girls. It believes that a boy will take care of his parents when they get old but a girl becomes part of her husband's family when she gets married, leaving her own parents to be poor and alone when they are old. So many people want a boy as a child and many girls are abandoned like I was.
Some people say that there are more than a million abandoned baby girls in China, many of them just as healthy and fine as I was. Only 50,000 of these girls, like me, were lucky enough to be adopted and find families and love.
So many, many Chinese girls are never adopted. They live in orphanages. They do not get good medical care, or education or even enough food to eat. They do not get love. What about their civil rights? Do they have any? Who is listening to them? Who is helping them? What can I do to help because these girls are me.;
I think it is wonderful that we solved at least some of the civil rights issues for some Americans here in the USA, but it is not fair that we have not really done all we could for civil rights of other people here and in other countries. Think about it. Maybe next we can help civil rights movements for all Americans and for people around the world.
I can't change the world, but I can play a part in changing MY world. China's orphanages and the girls in them were where my world began and what I think is left to be done to help civil rights.
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Arabella, age 9, is the 2004 winner of The New York Liberty Award for her vounteer work with kids who have cancer. She was adopted from Maoming, China when she was five months old. Her school assignment recently was to read a book about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s and to write an essay entitled "What Is Left To Be Done?" focusing on civil rights issues anywhere in the world.
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