Prejudicial treatment still rampant today
by Laura Vatalaro, se news editor

     In today’s society, there are many things that people have to put up with on a day-to-day basis, like heat in the summer, car maintenance or highway traffic. Somehow, however, awful things like prejudice got thrown into that mix. It’s something that has always been here, something that no one likes to see, but at the same time, it is accepted and people just move on. Why do people do that?
     Prejudice is not like heat in the summer; it is something that can be controlled. So, in the famous words from the L.A. riots, “Can’t we all just get along?” Well, why can’t we?
     Prejudice comes from people’s perspectives on reality. They see the world and base their beliefs on what they see and how they interpret it. Things like bigotry, racism and prejudice are formed when people refuse to open their minds and beliefs to the beliefs of others in society.
     This refusal to accept other’s beliefs can cause many things, but the main result is narrow-mindedness.
     When an individual is narrow-minded, anyone who doesn’t look like him or act like him is wrong. This narrow view can also lead to the categorizing of people based on the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character.
     This article is written not only to inform you of prejudice, but to bring it close to home so that those of you who have read the above context and fail to see its relevance can perhaps open your own minds to how prejudice is alive and well in today’s society even though in many cases, it has become very subtle.
     In my own life, I have experienced very little prejudice directed toward myself. However, I have seen it directed toward others who are close to me in my life.
     For example, my best friend and I went to Wal-Mart for some Easter candy to give out to people at work. As we were walking out, an employee at the door checked everyone’s receipts to make sure that they paid for everything they were carrying out.
     The woman in front of me was African-American and had three small children running around her cart while the employee meticulously checked every single item in the woman’s cart. I didn’t think very much of that because, hey, she was just doing her job, right?
     Then I walked up and handed her my receipt. She waved me by. She must not have checked it because I had one bag and the woman before had an entire cart, right? Then, my best friend walked up and flashed the employee her receipt thinking that she could just go by because she purchased the same items I had.
     The woman retorted, “Hey, where are you thinking about going?” So my best friend handed her receipt to the woman who carefully went through my friend’s bag. My best friend is Hispanic.
     This incident shocked me. How is it that in today’s society something as simple as security in a Wal-Mart is based on bigotry. I should have been stopped just like everyone else waiting to get out of Wal-Mart, but instead, I was passed by probably because I am white.
     Some people may think that I am taking this single isolated incident way too far, but this is just the one incident that sticks out in my mind. I have not once been stopped by security at Wal-Mart to have my receipt checked while my best friend has been checked every time.
     However, racial prejudice is not the only prejudice that runs rampant in our society. Ageism is another example of prejudice.
     In my own neighborhood, a group of kids who went down to the pool everyday during the summer were sitting on the sidewalk outside a woman’s home. She saw them outside and noticed that one of the young men had a bandanna on his head. She automatically assumed that he and his friends were a gang simply because they were young and were on her property.
     Now, anyone who has been in my neighborhood would automatically know that gang activity is probably nonexistent and certainly not prevalent. But, this woman was absolutely stuck on the idea that these kids were in a gang, so she called the police. Later, when she spoke about the safety of our neighborhood during the home owner’s association meeting, she said she was “scarred for life” and “scared to come out of her own home.”
     Teenagers somehow are always viewed as a group of people with no clue about the world around them and not as individuals.
     Things like this happen everyday to people undeserving of this treatment, not only when shopping or hanging out with friends, but when applying for a job, driving in a car or even purchasing a home.
     Why is it that people cannot see past the color of one’s skin?
     Why is it that as a society, we separate and categorize each other by race?
No one is equal to another person; everyone is different. Every person should be treated as an individual and not as a color or an age group.
     My only hope is that people who are, in fact, truly opened-minded and able to see past the color of someone’s skin will lead by example. Then, tomorrow will be a better place with only one race of people and no longer a need to categorize people by their minor and insignificant similarities.