Prejudice And Discrimination: Thoughts?

Prejudice is an attitude or prejudging, usually in a negative way. Discrimination is an action of unfair treatment directed against an individual or group. There are two kind of discriminations. First, individual discrimination is about negative treatment of one person by another. For example, people discriminate one ethnic and one culture because of their skin colors. Second, institutional discrimination is about negative treatment of a minority group that is built into society’s institution.

I don’t think it is enough to have good intentions when it comes to race relations. I am Vietnamese and I can see that Vietnamese community is not united as it seems. They never stand for their own folks. They just want to make money from their own countrymen. They never want to help other Vietnamese. When one person in the community needs you the most, the whole community turned their back on them. They’d rather stand for white people to get themselves benefit than for a Vietnamese for nothing. I feel really bad. If say Vietnamese helps their own people, only the next Vietnamese American generation can do it.

I remember back when I worked in the swap meet for my family, there was a customer coming in and asked me where the deodorant was. At that time, there was a lot of customers and I was busy with checking out for other customers. But still, I politely told her where it was. Then, she threw me some racists words that I should go with her to show her where the product was and she told me to go back to my country if I could not do good at my job. I was so shocked and I did not know what to say because back then my English was still limited. Fortunately, the lady that I was helping to check out stood up for me and she confronted that lady, and made she left. She later told me if there was somebody threw racial slurs at you, don’t be quiet but stand up. Now, I realize what she said to me was right 100 percent. If you don’t stand up for yourself, there will be no one.

Dr. Martin Luther King used to say. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do it. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do it.” Why hating each other when you can try to be friends with them? It is blatant racism that can never go away. It is the same loop but new victims. It is all depended on the behaviors of people. How they treated other people are different from them. Good or bad. It seemed like hate had taken to a new level. So please, ask yourself a question. Is it the world you want to live in? A world full of hate and discrimination? What if the next generation does the same and lives in the same world like the previous generation had created? Spend a moment thinking about that. It is time to change before it is too late. Please don’t hate the Asian community or other minority communities in the U.S or other places in the world because they are human and their lives matter.