Prejudice is the way a person or group or people judge something or someone before direct experience. There are many types of prejudices, many of which can be emotionally harmful to anyone. I myself have seen one type of prejudice in action: racism. I have seen it happen in my own school, every day. Throughout high school, racism occurs everywhere all the time. Even I have been involved in racism. For example, I have noticed that people in Glenbrook South, when they are choosing their friends, they tend to choose people that are of the same race as them. Some of them mix a little here and their between other races, however most of them hang out with their own. I have no issues whatsoever on the topic of racism, but I have committed it without knowing it.
I talk to people that aren't the same race as me all the time, and I am as friendly and kind as I can be when I do, but my closest friends are all the same nationality as me. The kids I like to hang out with the most are Indian, which is what my race is. My situation is the same as others around me. Asians usually hang out with Asians, African-Americans usually hang out with African-Americans, Caucasians usually hang out with Caucasians, Mexicans usually hang out with Mexicans, and within each of our “groups” we go through the same school at the same time every day. Occasionally we mix with each others groups, but in the end the friends we count on the most will be in our own. No question.
Racism can spark many different types of behavior to one another. For example, dislike towards one another before actually meeting them and getting to know them, violence and fighting can occur because of a small misunderstanding between two or more different races, competition towards a “who's the best at this?” kind of deal between two different people from two different races, and so on. All these are negative effects of racism, but are inevitable. They will happen given the situation of racism in our school, and there is no stopping them. When I see these fights occur in front of my eyes, I frown in disapproval. People are so overcome with their anger that they do not see that their small little fight can have a chain-reaction for their respective groups to have a bigger, more threatening fight. They do not see that they should stop fighting and apologize to each other rather than having their whole groups fighting each other. When two groups of races fight each other, they don't feel sorry at all for one another, which only escalates the fight. They will show no mercy towards other races, regardless of how little that person know might know about how the whole big fight that first happened.
People will fight people from other races without even knowing what started the fight in the first place: a small fight or competition between two people, or something else insignificant. The way I believe racism hurts us the most is that if all the kids in the school one day forgot about racism and forgot about their dislikes upon other races, we would become more powerful than the faculty. The faculty right now sees us all in our groups and uses this as a tool to keep us all in line. In reality, if we were all fighting for the same cause rather than fighting each other, we, as a student body would most likely win. We fight for all the wrong reasons.
I believe that school racism exists because of how different each and every one of us is raised. We all are raised by different parents of different races, and they teach us all the same values their parents taught them. Each race most likely will teach their kids how to life out their lives in a way similar to other parents of the same race, which will then make each race have a different view on how they live their lives. All these races will cling onto their own because they will all agree on many things, while they will disagree with people from other races. School racism will always be there, affecting every one like it has always been in the same way: division. Races will always be divided.
As of now, racism will never be wiped out completely, but there is a small chance that it can be minimized. Nevertheless, it would take a very long time for anything different to happen, and it would take a lot of sacrifices made by every race. Racism will be fluctuating over time, but it will always be there. It will always be a top 3 cause for the largest, most vicious fights kids and graduates will remember when looking back on their school years.
