Discrimination

We read in the book of Privilege, Power, and Difference about how people are afraid of the unfamiliar. In some form or way, we all have that natural tendency to question or avoid those who do not look like us. A prime example, of when this happened to me is when I was in downtown on my way home and I saw a man who had an amputated leg and was on crutches. My first thought was, how does he live with himself knowing that he can’t walk or anything without support? I then thought to myself, what if this was me, what would I do, how would I feel about myself? Sometimes we never know that we are in the category of being afraid or curious about the unfamiliar, but when we take that second glance or ponder about that person then we fall under the category of being afraid or curious about the unfamiliar. There are around 54 million people with disabilities who are abused inside and outside of their home which often leads to them dropping out of school or not pursuing their dream because they’re afraid of being ridiculed by others (Alan G. Johnson). The time when someone brings up one of the “special” terms such as sexism, racism, heterosexism, and others people tend to try to avoid those topics if they are the people who are dominant. For example, men who hear the word sexism or male privilege become so uncomfortable and tend not to talk about the topic (Alan G. Johnson). The reason they feel uncomfortable is because they tend to think that it is a personality issue rather than an issue of the whole group. We also tend to give a negative connotation to words like these which make them uncomfortable for the dominant to talk about. For example, whenever someone uses the term racist, people automatically think white and that is not true because there are other people of color who are racist too, maybe even more severe than the common white that we talk about. The same thing applies to Muslims, when people say that Muslims are terrorists, when in fact the term terrorism does not only apply to Muslims. Terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims (Google). Terrorism applies to all those things that the news and other media try to hide when they say mass shooters, school shootings, and rampage killers. These people aren’t from the Middle East therefore, they aren’t terrorists. Terms continue to get misused and instead of always thinking about the dominant group when we use terms such as terrorists, racists, and sexists we need to start thinking about everyone and think about how to make a solution to these prejudices rather than always calling out names when these terms are used. Not all people fit into these terms and it should be understood that some of these people did not start or continue this prejudice, they were just born into it (Alan G. Johnson). “You can't judge a book by looking at its cover” (Bo Diddley).