Recorded from Salisbury, Maryland, 2021.

This snapshot was gathered by the Peale in conjunction with the Maryland Voices initiative at Maryland Humanities, specifically to supplement the "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America" traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program. This collection, made up of stories of first-time voters between the ages of 18 and 24, showcases the experiences of young people as they wrestled with the 2020 presidential election, issues around social justice, the environment, immigration, and the pandemic. The full collection of stories is available at www.museumonmainstreet.org.

Balil Chaudry (00:00): My name is Balil Chaudry. I'm a senior at Salisbury University. I grew up in Brooklyn and Salisbury, Maryland. I was in Brooklyn until I was 10 years old, and then I moved down here for the rest of my life basically, and then I stayed here for college as well. It's an interesting mix because I got to live in both the city, a more rush of a vibe, and also Salisbury, which is a really small town, so I got to see the disparity in both aspects of America.

Balil Chaudry (00:32): One of the quotes my professor says all the time, "It's your world, I'm just living in it." So that perception of it is, if you believe in that, go ahead, as long as you're not harming anybody. But I have different values, so I'm going to go by that. But we could still be friends even though we believe in different things.

Balil Chaudry (00:52): I was raised Muslim. So in high school, there was a lot of people who would quote to the Quran out of context. And they were trying to use that to validate the perception that all Muslims are terrorists. And then I also had my friends that were getting angry because you're just really attacking who they are as a person and with the values they were raised on. So they got really upset with that.

Balil Chaudry (01:19): So when you're on both sides of that, you have to notice that when you're attacking somebody for who they are, emotions are running on high, they can't control that, that's just a natural response. But you have to understand that the people on the side that think... For example, that think all Muslims are terrorists, they're just coming from more of an uneducated or not fully educated viewpoint about it because they're looking at what the translation says online. [inaudible 00:01:49].

Balil Chaudry (01:49): To let my Muslim friends who have read the Quran in its Arabic connotation. They know the overall context. Also, a lot of people can relate to the aspect of, if you type something in and Google translate, it's not going to give you the exact quote about what it is. So I just had to sit down with everybody, and we were breaking up each of the arguments that everybody had, just to explain the context of it so to speak.

Balil Chaudry (02:19): It's just more about understanding each other, I guess, with any issue overall, even with Black Lives Matter, a lot of people were going into retaliations saying all lives matter. And I heard a great analogy where it was like, what would you do if the house next to you is on fire? Are you going to start telling people to hose it down with water, and then tell them to hose your house down even though it's not on fire?

Balil Chaudry (02:43): The African-American, and black community is in trouble right now, just because of the discrimination they face. So you need to help them with that. So it's more of the issue of understanding why somebody is coming from where they're coming from than understanding who they are. If that makes sense.

Asset ID: 2021.03.06.b