" Discrimination and the Road to Equality" by Alejandro P

 

            The declaration of independence asserts, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” However, our nation has not yet risen up and lived out the true meaning of its creed. Discrimination is defined as prejudiced, or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment. We’ve made great progress since the days of slavery, but discrimination still shackles society.

 Even in education, where students are supposed to feel safe and supported, I have faced discrimination. In fifth grade, I had a teacher who would openly discriminate against the only four students who were not caucasian in the class, my brother and me, and two other siblings in the class. We were exemplary students, having demonstrated to be the best students in the class, yet she still went out of her way to make passive aggressive comments towards us and make sure we knew our place. Discrimination is not something that is always noticed. Back then, I didn’t realize that there was something wrong with the way she was treating me, but looking back on it, I now realize that she went out of her way to make school difficult for me and my brother. She would do little things to single us out from the rest of the class, such as announcing to the whole class that education wasn’t cheap and that we would have to pay for everything in school right after I had told her that I wasn’t able to buy one of the fifth grade class shirts. She made it public to the class whenever my brother and I, and the other twins weren’t able to pay for something.

            My family has encountered this discrimination in all facets of our life, including public places such as stores. A few years ago, I went to a Target near LAX to buy snacks while I waited for my dad’s plane to arrive. It had been around 5 minutes when the security began following us around the store making sure that we weren’t stealing. Despite the fact that we had done nothing wrong, and were simply looking through the snack aisle, they followed us throughout the store until we had left as if we were criminals being escorted out of the store.

Even though I have faced discrimination throughout my life, I have not been discriminated against as much as my mom. People always assume that my mom is an illegal immigrant, and that she does not speak English. Even when she speaks to them in English, they judge her by the way she looks and only speak to her in Spanish, assuming that she knows the language because of the way she looks. She isn’t given respect because they just assume that she won’t say anything about what they are doing. In fact, one day when she was speaking Spanish, an older caucasian lady yelled out to her that she shouldn’t be speaking Spanish and that she should go back to her country even though my mom is a U.S. citizen.

People continue to unjustly prejudge others based on their ethnicity, regardless of the morals that our nation was founded upon. We have come a long way, but we have a long road to pave towards equality for all, and we must strive to bring about change for others, and we do this by educating our children to focus on character rather than skin color.