Imagine this: you are living in a discriminatory world full of people who do not understand you, and choose to judge you by your differences instead of getting to know you. If you are even the slightest bit different. The slightest distance from ordinary, you are judged. You do not get to fight for them to know you, because as soon as they place stereotypes on you. They decide who you are supposed to be. Who you are supposed to fight for. Who you are supposed to fall in love with. In this world, it is not up to you. In this world, you have the choice to let it define you, strengthen you or destroy you. Most of the time, you will be judged for being different. Nobody is the same, and nobody is perfect. Under those circumstances, people are …show more content…
As a result, they are barred of their identities. Jeremiah, a 15 year old black boy in a discriminatory neighborhood, attended Percy Academy to play basketball. A standard image placed on people of color are that they are not very smart and do not care about school. Miah did not choose to be black, but he was still overlooked. This affected Miah when he was placed in “‘remedial history. School made a mistake.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘They do stuff like that all the time, I bet.’ ‘Yeah-- it just seems like more than a coincidence when it happens to me. Like what made them think I needed remedial anything. Nobody tested me. Nobody asked me. They just threw me in it and looked surprised when I knew it all. I mean, it makes you wonder--- is it my hair?’ He smiled. I kind of half smiled, not sure what he was getting at. ‘Or the melanin thing?’ The melanin thing. I played with the sentence for a moment in my head and frowned. The world was like that a long time ago” (Woodson 76). This results in him feeling stupid and angry. He felt as though he was not respected and just wanted to be treated the same way anyone else would be treated. Rather than test Miah, the school administrator’s were quick to assume that he was stupid and deserved to be in a remedial history class. An injustice was served when his identity was taken …show more content…
Soon thereafter, Miah is involved in an interracial relationship with Ellie. Ellie is a 15 year old Jewish and white girl, and comes from a family that does not respect her relationship choices. Like Ellie’s parents, the people Miah and Ellie are surrounded by were very judgemental, so “Miah had to lean into me to speak. He smiled and touched my cheek. People stared, but we made believe we didn’t notice. People always stared. I feel like I’ve grown an extra leg since we started going out, Miah said once” (Woodson 153). The extra leg is used as a metaphor because people often stare at them when
Medina’s use of sarcasm towards the kids of his school about rarely learning reveals how he was hoping he would become more educated, but instead the school fights about race more than
Douglas had to show him to actually make him believe that he could write. It literally shows that your class and your social status just shows your learning and not actually your education. The boy just assumed the author wouldn’t know cause he was a slave. Somewhat on the same path was Bich Minh Nguyen saying “ My quantity of gold stars was neck and neck with that of my two competitors, Brenda and Jennifer,... Week after week, the lion perched on Brenda’s desk or Jennifer’s desk” (Bich Minh Nguyen).
Beverly Tatum is an expert on minority social identity and the experiences of kids growing up searching for their identity. In Tatum’s work titled “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” she breaks down the barriers and views of black kids growing up in a white dominated society. Tatum claims that black adolescents are labeled, grouped, and stereotyped because of their culture and race in society. She says that these kids grow up differently because of the barriers they face in schools as just young kids.
As we can see from these examples, when one follows stereotypes, people feel comfortable because it affirms what they believe; however, when one breaks stereotypes, people still feel comfortable because they label this instance as an exception. Moreover, when people perceive things differently, communication fails; therefore, people feel invisible because no one will empathize with them. Furthermore, stereotypes make people feel comfortable when they are followed, and if they are broken; people still feel comfortable because they label the anomaly as an
People are constantly judging people just because they are of different background or how they look. It is like people are putting a black dot on to someone that erases who they actually are as a person and makes them just a race, a gender, or a religion. Even in school, teenagers will judge someone just
Discrimination like this one is similar to the discriminations in To Kill a Mockingbird. Acts of discrimination impact the lives of scout , Atticus and Helen.. The issues of racism affect the life of Scout because she grows up around racism. ”Hi mr.Cunnigham, hows your entailment getting along?” .Scout is making conversation with mr.Cunningham who almost killed a black man.
When the school finally reassessed his abilities, they realized that the testing was flawed and that he had low-average intellectual ability. In addition,
It was slightly shown to him when he went to his first school there was some classroom segregation because everybody was corporally punished except for him. This was due solely to his race. When he moved to a new school, Greenwich Village School, he was introduced to a whole new type of separation due to class. The majority of the student body was also white so he was not sticking out like he had at his previous school. Through this new social standing he had to pretend he knew what they were speaking about.
In our world, people who are born different from other people are almost always treated differently from those who are “normal”. Nearly every person that is treated differently is treated in a more negative way than they would be if they fit in with other people. This is a terrible and insensible trend that has caused years of suffering throughout human history. Because of unimportant and miniscule discrepancies, such as race, we have decided to put up walls between cultures and make ourselves narrow-minded and un-open to new ideas. The reality that discrimination is universal has lead to discrimination becoming a popular theme in literature and other forms of entertainment.
Ferguson centralizes her argument on role race plays when boys attempt to break the rooms in a classroom setting. When young white boys cause a distraction, they are often let off the hook because this behavior is natural among males. However, this is not true across all races. When black boys obstruct the classroom peace, they are viewed as adults who are causing a crime. Another strong point that Ferguson creates is the two different views that society has of black boys.
Every day people are judged and discriminated on the way they look, color of skin, what their wearing, and were they come from. It is upsetting how the world is today and I don’t think it will ever changed as there is always going to be that one person who is going to judge a person because of their culture,
Our life experiences make our present, our values, our way of behaving and thinking. Although no one is perfect, we are prone to develop prejudice against those who are totally different from us. For most of the time, prejudice only affects us personally. But if an individual is given a power to be responsible for another person’s live or death, prejudice can turn into a deadly weapon.
In this way, he explains that they are racially differentiated upon, where the students are regarded as submissive while
But now our society has evolved, we gained clarity and reasons. We are now able to acknowledge and accept people who are different whereas we use to enslave and discriminate people who were a little different. But still, it seems we have a long way to
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close September 11, 2001 is remembered as one of the most tragic days in American history. Yet in the days after, people all united together to support each other. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Oskar, a nine year old boy, thinks of a solution that is a little unique through his imagination - a birdseed shirt for the people who leaped from the towers, falling to their deaths, to escape the incinerating heat of the flames. Throughout this novel, just like the example above, characters use their imaginations, art, and creativity to express their inner selves and heal their emotional wound from the world. Oskar tries to push aside any depression he feels so keenly throughout the