Minority Relations Paper
In our society today there are a various amounts of minorities that we often tend to overlook. Before taking this class, I never realized how often I come into contact with a minority group. Furthermore, I never paid attention to how people act towards people that are part of a minority group. There are several issues that arise in our country today due to discrimination or biased opinions towards a certain group of people. For example, everything that is happening in Baltimore may not be happening if people did not feel they were a part of a minority group. If everyone felt like they were as important as all other groups, then a lot less chaos would happen and we would not have as many problems. The two minority groups from a past experience that I have interacted with would be African Americans and Hispanics. Dealing with discrimination is something that I have actually had to deal with before. For the past year and a half, I have been dating someone who is half African American (his other half being white). There have always been judgmental people that have had their own share of opinions. Although African Americans currently make up thirteen percent of our population, which is 40 million people, people are still very discriminative and prejudice toward them. As a couple, we have faced several different complications. An example that comes to mind is a parent of someone we went to school with using inappropriate names when talking about us. We did not react badly, just brushed it off. Michael (my boyfriend) has been dealing with things like this since a small age. I always knew the stories he would tell, but I never looked at it from his side until taking this class. My family was not always accepting of me dating someone of another race either. They are by no means racist, but some certain family members of mine did not think it was right. My mom and dad were both very accepting and helped make the situation easier. They have never been discriminating in anyway. They actually react in a mad manor when someone acts poorly toward us, as any parent would. Today, we have overcome a lot of racial issues. For instance, we are no longer segregated, there are several interracial couples, and our president is black. Over the years, we have come a long way. Back in the twenties, they used a system called grades of intelligence to determine who was smart and who was not. This was determined by the slope of the face, white being most intelligent and blacks being last. Now, this system seems ridiculous considering there are several wealthy, smart, and famous African Americans. I think sometimes people are so caught up in how they were raised and how things use to be, they are still very prejudice toward African Americans. They still believe in the “separate but not equal”. I think stereotypes come in to play with this also. People see African Americans and assume they are “thugs”. This is probably because black’s high school graduation or college percent’s are really low compared to whites or other races, while crime rates are higher. The movie we watched, Guess Whos for Dinner, was a great example of some of the simple things that are faced in real world couples. Some people are perfectly okay with seeing an interracial couple, while others are not. Another situation that I have been involved with while dealing with a minority group was when I went to Mexico. We consider Hispanics a minority group, but in this case I was a part of the minority. My family and I went on a cruise last summer and Mexico was one of our stops. They obviously interact with English speaking white Americans often since it is a stop on a cruise ship, but there were several events that occurred where I now realize how different they are from us. When we arrived in Mexico there were several stations set up along the roads where they were selling items, for very cheap. Even in their own country they are not making money where
