Racial Discrimination: My Views And Experience
Merriam-Webster defines discrimination as “prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment. ” In the age of modern media, the definition has been misconstrued for me personally throughout my life as a person of color. I thought I’d seen discrimination in the fourth grade when two of the girls in my class got into an argument over colored pencils. I knew that I had seen it two days after Trayvon Martin was shot and the man being interviewed by the reporter on the news said Trayvon was a victim of discrimination. I began to understand what a serious issue this was with the start of the “We Can’t Breathe” movement after the 2014 death of Eric Garner, whose last words were “I can’t breathe. ” I could see that the only reason the police initially approached Eric Garner was because he was an African-American man. I know this is when I truly began to comprehend this issue because for the first time I saw myself, a black male in America, in the face of someone who was killed because of discrimination.
My only thought was how could this be happening to me? What about me is so easy for certain people to hate? It was not long before I realized that this hate that was being directed “only to me” manifested itself in so many different ways. The revelation triggered curiosity as to who else it was happening to. I discovered that other people were facing mistreatment based on such miniscule parts of who they actually were such as their gender, culture, religion, age, financial status, and even education. After years of being a witness to many people in classrooms, public spaces, and even within my family make comments and carry out actions towards others that “weren’t nice”, I could finally pinpoint that this behavior was discriminatory and that these groups were being marginalized.
All people have implicit biases, so looking at means of completely ending this phenomenon are near impossible. However, I can recognize two immediate actions that can be taken in terms of prevention of discrimination and directly in its face.
One of them is one that I began to discern after discovering a quote from Nelson Mandela that read “People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. ” Most people carry traits they develop at a young age throughout their entire lives; teaching tolerance at a young age can be so instrumental for the elimination of discrimination. The stigma that “discrimination is dying out” due to the power of social media and young liberal activists may be a factor in comfortability and complacency in many homes and schools. However, even if it is not as much as before, hate speech and discriminatory beliefs are still being instilled into young and impressionable minds.
The other action is one that I see neglected on a daily in the halls of my own school and on social media. Recognizing and commenting on the unjust treatment that makes up discriminatory behavior is so important, yet rarely happens. Turning a blind eye to this monster of an issue is only allowing its power to grow. Morally, saying something will always hold more weight than saying nothing, and just believing it is unfair.
