The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression
My
sister and I were in a store and a Hispanic mother walked in with several children
and the children started running through the store in different directions. My sister shook her head and said “look at
those people, they have all those children and they can’t control them”. She also made the comment that the Spanish
people are taking all of our jobs. She
stated that African Americans are having problems finding jobs because the
Hispanic people are taking over. I
honestly get chills and cringe every time I hear my sister make prejudicial
comment because it is very ironic. Several
years ago the same comments were made about my own African American culture and
now a new group is now being subjected to the same demeaning comments.
It
is how easy it is for one to forget about how it feels to be ridiculed and be
the recipient of verbal attacks in public.
I have to remind my sister constantly of how racist her comments are and
that her insensitivity is very disappointing.
She could benefit from taking a diversity class, because the valuable
lessons that I have learned will never leave me. My sister’s attitude should be to help people
rather than to hurt and hinder.
Diversity is God’s gift to the world and we should welcome the gift with
open arms!
This is hard to swallow at times, when some people are just adept to the idea of being equal to all people and seeing them as individuals not parts of a stereotypical group, like most people are accustomed to. With these types of people the only way to really fill them in on their issues isn't to tell them but to give them a taste of their own medicine. This is a way to be put them in their place.
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