Bias and discrimination are just two things that Americans witness in daily life. Through the subconscious avoidance of certain types of people that vary depending on who you are, to large scale systematic machines designed to trap people where they’re at, prejudice has become a natural element of partaking in society.
These behaviors have become so normalized that they are beginning to fold in on themselves, meaning that a group of oppressed peoples grows so large or so loud that the roles are reversed.
If the social environment at that point does not settle or balance out, then there’s a risk that bias and discrimination will only continue.
It goes without saying that factors such as bias will never not be part of society; however, it would be ignorant to say that people have no power in changing discriminatory behavior. It’s also hard to understand when things in society shift to a double standard or begin to shift in that direction.
Stereotyping is a product of discrimination. When a group of people commonly stereotyped ( e.g. women, people of color, white men, homeless) fails to move past the unfairness of the situation, the result could be a strong rebuttal from the target that only sustains the life of the ignorance. While ignorance based on misconceptions is one level of uncool, choosing to return that ignorance is a sign of emotional immaturity.
This volley of ignorance is what tears people apart. Addressing a blind eye can only happen after the blind person chills out.
The issue in reflecting on oneself in our weed-out culture is that those biases and shallow characteristics form a whole story of their own.
That change is something that can only happen from within the discriminator. Not feeding a person’s ignorance is a change you can make at any opportunity.
What all this means is be the bigger person. It feels stupid and nearly insulting to have to be the bigger person when the issue of discrimination has grown to dangerous levels, but what hope is there in expecting bigness from those more conscious in their discrimination when they were small enough to behave in that mindset in the first place? Only you can make the change.