Prejudice alive and well in contemporary American values
Jeff Moses
There is a terrible lie that has been kicking around America for decades. Somewhere along the line, many Americans decided racism is dead, that America is unprejudiced and just in all matter of race, religion and belief.
This is one of the most absurd beliefs one could possibly have. Prejudice is alive and well in contemporary America.
One of the weakest arguments for the fall of American racism is the United States now has a black president, so we must be progressing tremendously.
Well, under the administration of the first black president, the amount of black people incarcerated has risen to 1 million. That makes up just under half of our 2.3 million-person prison population.
If all of these people are truly breaking the law, then the problem isn’t them. It is that the laws are criminalizing the activities of black communities.
Another example of America’s complicity with prejudice is seen in the way the Middle East, and the religion of Islam have been portrayed in the American media.
On Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim terrorists supposedly did something to America that America now does regularly to just about every Middle Eastern country we can, and that gave the U.S. media license to demonize the world’s largest religion.
People who were perceived to be Muslim were asked to leave airplanes; the television talking heads throw the word, “Muslim,” around like a slur, and even in the last presidential election, one of the biggest fears for Republicans was Obama might have been Muslim.
Many Americans view this as a rational fear stemming from the atrocious acts of 9/11, but it actually is more fear of a mostly brown skinned culture that Americans do not understand.
If all Muslims can be judged as terrorists because of 9/11, then I say all Catholics are child molesters
because of the actions of those priests, and all Christians are Planned Parenthood burning psychopaths.
One that hits far closer to home for MCC students is the treatment of Mexicans and South Americans. Too many people are comfortable with laws that make it legal for police to harass people for suspicion of being illegal immigrants.
It’s just a way to legitimize racial profiling, and further harass a community that in so many ways is already mistreated in this big racist “melting pot.”
