Prejudice and Bias

Growing up as an African American I have been faced with prejudice many times in my life. Often you can walk into stores and watch people grab their bags or just look at you different, especially if it is a higher end stores. I have learned that many people judge me just because of my color and make statements because they are ignorant and that is all they know. Having such experiences as a young girl I will never forget reading the story To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. This book showed some experiences that I had been through in my life. In the book it was references several times that white people had no business interacting with black people. As a child growing up in Miami there was different times when I had friends that were white that there parents did not like the fact that we would spend time together. We were allowed to be friends at school but not outside because their parents didn’t want us interacting. Judgments in this book were made about many of the people because of their skin color and that happens on a daily basis. When I read the book it made me realize that not all people were created equally because it showed that racism was still alive and well.

Reading this story as a child who had experienced some of these same things as a child brought up many mixed emotions. I believed that in our society there was more of equality but after reading that and knowing some of the experiences I had had it made me realize how prejudice some people still were. This brought up a feeling of mixed emotions for me and wanting better for our country. I think since then especially since the election of Barrack Obama it has shown how far our country has come which makes me happy and is a feeling of relief that my grandchildren will hopefully not feel some of the prejudice that I have.