Aviva's thoughts on prejudice...

Imagine, not being able to go to the same restaurant as others, not being able to use the same washroom as others or even getting kicked out of your own home for living in a neighborhood with others who don’t want you. This can all happen from being judged on your color or religion.

You might be thinking that you would never do something like that to someone else. But, people do this all the time. Many people say prejudice things everyday without even realizing what they are doing and the harm they are causing.

What I have learned about in class is that prejudice means pre-judging someone. I feel that this is wrong and can only hurt others. Some examples are like the Jews getting judged just because of there religion or the blacks because of the color of there skin. People are judging people by the way they look.

What happens very often is you will see someone with piercings all over and think that they are very awkward or strange. People pre-judge bigger people and assume negative things instead of looking at what type of person they are inside. This also goes on every day at a normal everyday school all over the world. Kids pre-judge other kids just because of what they wear or the way that they look. Everyone should be treated equally and should not be put down for looking differently. You just have to get to know them before you pre-judge (prejudice) them.

Another thing people do is stereotype. Stereotyping leads to being prejudice. I think that stereotyping is an awful thing and that we should try to prevent it from happening. Some very common ones are “Jews have big noses” or “Chinese people are bad drivers”. There is no point of saying any of these comments because they make the world a bad place to live in, full of negative thoughts which don’t help but only hurt others.

These stereotypes and prejudiced sayings, lead to consequences that people do not deserve. The Jews in the holocaust suffered consequences for no reason. In class we watched the movie Daniel’s Story. After watching that it really made me think about how over 600,000 innocent Jewish people like us died for nothing. Or how black people could not sit on the same benches as whites or even drink from certain water fountains. Once a again the Blacks and the Jews got the consequences when they did not deserve them.

All of these terrible things have been going on for a very long time. There has been nobody successful in putting a stop to it. I wish that all of this could come to an end, and the whole world could learn from their lessons. Even though this seems impossible I still hope that it can happen one day.