On March 6 the first blackout day movement took place across social media to show the beauty of being black.

Black men and women all over the world shared their photos to celebrate themselves and where they come from.

Movements such as blackout day are important in a society where black or brown people think they are not beautiful because of the color of their skin.

Earlier this week, Indian women started their own movement, #reclaimthebindi.

This movement showed up right in time for Coachella, where many festival lovers walk around sporting bindis or Native American headdresses.

Culture is not a costume.

Spirituality is not an accessory.

White women are praised and held up as style icons for wearing the same things that brown women are discriminated against and picked on for.

Of course these movements didn’t come without some backlash.

There were white tears all over the Internet about how racist blackout day is because there can’t be a whiteout day. White people telling black people that this movement only “segregates them further.”

What kind of person says that to someone? Is this not 2015?

On May 8 there will be an Asian Invasion day to celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage month.

I will definitely be partaking in this, as a person of mixed race.

As a child, I always understood I was part Asian and wasn’t fully white. But, calling myself mixed race or biracial never seemed right to me.

That’s was because I would have kids argue with me about my own heritage.

I obviously look very white, but my father definitely isn’t. He’s from Thailand, just like his sister and mother.

One day I spoke up about being mixed and was immediately told I was wrong. Wrong about my own bloodline.

I was told things like “you’re not mixed, you’re white” and “stop pretending to be Asian, you don’t look Asian.”

How is someone supposed to respond to things like that? So I didn’t.

As I got older I became more vocal about the Thai part of my family.

Why can’t I be both white and Asian? Why do I have to pick one?

Oh right, I don’t because that’s what being mixed race means.

This is why representation is important. So little kids like the one I was don’t have to feel like they can’t be proud of their background or feel like they look “off.”

Representation is important so black women don’t feel like their features or styles are only beautiful if on a white woman. It’s important for children of color to have people like them to look up to and relate to.

No child should ever have to feel like the way they look isn’t the right way.

Book characters are assumed white unless stated otherwise. You would be lucky to see more than one black woman in most runway shows. Asian people are still viewed as “exotic.”

It’s time to move past that way of thinking.

Ignoring culture is not the way to do it.

Catering to the people that can’t stand when something isn’t about them is also not the way to do it.

If a grown black woman is brought to tears over the sight of a black Disney princess then that says a lot about the lack of representation in the media.

White people can do without a whiteout day.

After all, just turn on your television or Google image “beautiful women” or “beautiful men” if you want to stare at white people.

Representation is important. Especially in a society where being white and skinny seems to be the “default” or the “ideal.”

Don’t go skipping around with your flower crown on talking about how there is only one race and that is the human race.

No one wants to hear that.

Stop trying to erase race and let people to enjoy their culture and the beauty that comes with it.

Religion can be spoken about freely, yet we tread softly when publically mentioning it.

But, the hardest idea to grasp is that having the right to spread religious awareness is certainly not the same as pushing beliefs on others.

While people reserve the right to practice religious freedom and to speak without restraint about any faith they choose, forcing others to listen isn’t freedom of speech; it’s harassment.

There are over 127 major religions and seven billion people on earth with seven billion different views of God. Some love Him, some fear Him, some question His existence and some are still searching for Him.

Some will decide that God plays no role in the trials and tribulations of life, while others will find faith the moment they see their newborn child take the first breath of being.

Whether we discover where we spiritually belong in a pew on Sunday morning or on a lonely drive with no destination, the journey to finding or forgetting God is what determines our views. We can’t be told what and who to believe in, or to even believe in anything at all.

What we learn, who we meet and the challenges we face are what we remember when we stand before Him, not the church members that knock on our front doors, or the people that stand in the quad condemning us all to hell.

And if the church goer at your front door changes your perspective, let them. Be baptized in one church, change your mind, and be baptized in another. Let what you learned in biology class make you question evolution and the powers above.

Learning from life experiences and questioning God’s ways isn’t sin; it’s human. It’s human to change emotionally, mentally, and spiritually when physical surroundings change. It’s human to simply be curious and indecisive.

Faith only exists because there are people that believe strongly enough in it to make it a reality and a way of life. Without doubters and differences, the strength of religion would never have anything to be measured against.

Because of that, religion without true belief is weak.

Never practice out of habit, don’t follow just because your parents or friends do, and don’t ever think one religion is superior to another. In a time that seems to have the explanation for everything in a test tube or on a database, people believing in any God at all is a miracle in itself.