The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

               Personally I cannot hold onto any incidents of prejudice, or bias, or forms of oppression, for that that is a sure way to hold a grudge against everyone.  When I see a program or start to read a book that is clearly bias or shows prejudice I have to make sure that I am in the right frame of mind or just skip it all together.  One story that I will share is when 9/11 came and people where placing flags all over the place, on cars and in the front yard, and wearing them in every form.  I had a co-worker who was from Pakistan and she has a son that she was very worried about.  She did not know if she wanted to mark him and what he drove in some way to try and protect him or just not draw attention to him.  She decided not to draw any attention to him at all.  I had another co-worker that worked at another location and she came over one day and said “boy did Mrs. S. mark her car up with flags”.  I had to tell her no that was not Mrs. S car but someone else‘s car.  A person that wanted the world to know that she was an American, that Mrs. S was afraid it would draw to much attention to her son and have him attacked on the street.  We need to be very careful when jumping to conclusions about how people respond to a threat of danger.  It is not funny that because of where a person is from or what they look like puts them in danger every day that they leave the house.  I was disturbed that it never accrued to my co-worker that Mrs. S. would be afraid for her son and her husband. We took the time to talk about it and I hope that we both will remember that conversation from that time.  Her children may never feel threaten when going out, but some people are.  We have to make people aware of the full picture.