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Discrimination, as defined in the dictionary, is "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit."
In English, it means to treat unfairly based on race, religion, sex, sexual preference, age, and-and this is one many people have had to start dealing with much more recently because of the diversity of attire-the way we dress.
Now, I believe that it's pretty obvious; I wear black. I wear other colors but if we put all my clothes in a glass box, we would see black with splashes of other colors everywhere. Now, this usually gets me classified as a "goth", a "punk", "emo", and whhatever else people can derive from my style. Although in actuality, I only dress like me. I imitate nobody and in return only the naive who cannot find their own style immitate me. But the labels people attach to me often shape how I am percieved. Poeple see me as cold, mean, a drug user, drinking alcohol, shoplifting, etc.
And those who bother to know me I am nothing like that. Sure, I am a bit apathetic, but I care about people, and I try to be nice whenever I can. I have never and will never do drugs of any sort, I only have been drunk once, years ago, which I'm ever going to do again, and I have morals against shoplifting. So I am constantly judged wrong.
But, as many of you know, I have this friend. She's a great person, when she's not a b***h of course. She was the oly person I felt I cold talk to many, many times before. She's really helped me see the light sometimes. I wuld...would've...done anything to repay her, because in the short months I was her friend, I changed as a eprson and she helped me get through it.
Of course, there's one thing; her mom's a wack-job.
I met her mom waaaaaay back in November. I was wearing a blue and red shirt with blue jeans and my Chucks that are pretty much dead (you'll see why I bring up my outft that day later.) my friend had warned me that her mom was a bit nutzos so I'd better watch out. So i tried to be as nice as I possibly could to the woman. Didn't correct her when she kept calling me Edith, never inerrupted her when she was speaking, and I don't remember saying any curse words and I used my manners. nd you know, I thought she liked me, I really did. But apparently, her mother has told her she's not allowed to talk to me and has called the school and the teachers and told them that she isn't allowed to talk to me so look out for that. But now a lot of you must be wondering "Well, wait a second, that doesn't sound right. Why would her mother do that?" And the reason is...
...yeah you guessed it, becaue I wear black.
And the wort part of this, s my so-called "frined" has followed her lead, and has stopped talking to me, completely. The last time I held a conversation with her longer than a minute was February 23rd, the day after I had gotten hit by a car. I tried to find out what the hell was with her ignoring me, we got in a fight, and she's either blocked me or gotten a new AIM since then because she hasn't been online and we haven't tried to talk to either one another aside from rude comments since. So about a month.
What REALLY pisses me off is that she had a choice. She could've said to her mom "Mom, you are wrong. These people are not bad people, they are good people. I care about them, and it is wrong that you are going against them because of the clothing they wear. I will ocntinue to hang out with them. Do what you want to me, because they make me happy." I know I would've said something along those lines. But NO, she chose to go with her mother (who, as I will point out in a moment, is wrong) and ignore me. Which really upset me, because up until recently, I considered her my best friend, someone I could tell a lot of things too.
And here is where this is so wrong. This is where the discrimination comes in. "Treated unfairly based on a group, class, or society one belongs to instead of on a personal merit..."
Her mother said to stop talking to me because I wear black...it fits into a certain group of people, often referred to as "goths..."
This is discrimination.
It is people like me, who get treated unfairly because of things about my outer appearance that makes discrimination WRONG. It is wrong to make judgements about people based on what they wear, what their sexual orientation is, their religion, their race, it's WRONG.
Yet, while it seems that we are the ones who lose, it's really discriminaters like my "friend" and her mother here that are the losers. There are amazing people who are different from everyone else and because of closed minded individuals like the people featured in this blog, they are overlooked for potential best friends, co workers, and lovers.
One of my best friend's is an amazing man. He is funny, he's kind, and he's got a heart of gold. He's also gay. It doesn't change who he is, yet there was a guy in his house this summer who kept calling him a f*****t. The guy loses for being so closed minded.
I used to be Wiccan before making my final religious decision to be Athiest. Somehow, "Wicca" translated to "dark magic" and "Satan worshipping" and the few who knew ridiculed me for that. I still win because they missed out on the amazing person I am. (I don't know why I am an amazing person, but I do know that I am.)
(I saw this on the news awhile ago, so the details of the story may be a bit shaky, but it all leads to the same thing): A black man was driving home from a club one night and was pulled over by the cops for no apparent reason. He was then dragged out of his car and beaten by the (white) cops repeatedly. Whe asked, the officers claimed they thoguht he drew a gun. He didn't even own a gun.
We are taught by society, from our parents, and from our peers that discrimination is right. Little Sally could be excluded from a group because her skin is a few shades darker than all the other girls at her all white prep school. Bobby thinks he likes boys better than girls and because of that he is shunned in school. Little Tanya's family is Jewish and al the other little girls at school are Catholics and so she is yelled at for being different. But now, we must face the hard truth before we continue this behavior: DISCRIMINATION, BASED ON ANYTHING FROM AGE TO TYPE OF CLOTHING, FROM DISABILITIES TO RACE, IS W-R-O-N-G, WRONG.
Discrimination, as defined by Webster's dictionary, is " treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit." Maybe one day, we'll open the dictionary and that word will not be there. Then Little Sally's child and the rest of her friends will play jump rope together.
 rubixx tuesday · Fri Mar 23, 2007 @ 02:47am · 1 Comments |
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