Personal Incidents of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression     

                                                          By Lisa Martin

I have lots of memories of being treated with bias and prejudice. I remember my days at SUNY Binghamton and thinking that the town’s people had no concept of what equity should look like in the 1980’s, as they were blatantly racist. It was in Binghamton and its neighboring little towns that I learned how subtle racism could be, and these lessons served me well in the years to come. It was little things like ringing up my purchases and then asking me if I wanted a bag, when no one in line before me was asked that and I had more items. The way the dining hall lady threw my meal card on the table after punching it, but politely handed my White schoolmates theirs back. The waitresses at the fast food like chain restaurants took so long to seat us and even longer to take our orders. A teaching assistant once placed a “B” next to my name to identify me as the Black student in the lab class, and even after I reported it to the head of the biology department nothing was done. The professor for whom the assistant worked gave a speech while staring at me about student’s not belonging and how he would weed them out. All of these people refused “to treat in a fair and just manner and take into account my individual capabilities, but rather chose to discriminate against me based on my race” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. xii). And all of this occurred before my eighteenth birthday.

All of the people that denied me my right to equality and equity above caused me emotional anguish, pain, and self-doubt; after all maybe there was something about me besides my skin color that made me less worthy. On the other hand, all they had to do was treat me the way they treated the members of the dominant culture and to create an opportunity for greater equity for me. I have experienced many such incidents over the past decades, but now I stick up for myself. I am also much more self-assured and confident than that college freshman, so I do not buy into the bias they are handing out or internalize the attempts at oppression.

I watch a lot of television and movies, and there is a great deal of prejudice and oppression displayed on both the big and little screen, some of it based on reality. There have been shows and movies that epitomized stereotypes regarding African-Americans, like the poor family living in the projects on Good Times or the single-mother with several children on welfare in Claudine. To counter these stereotypes they came up with television shows like Julia and The Cosby Family, and even though many members of the dominant class have Julia or the Cosby family as neighbors, it seems so much easier for them to view us in housing projects and living off welfare.

We all need to change and start looking at each other as valuable members of society, and realize that our society can only be as good as we make it. One of my favorite quotes by John Donne, found in an Ernest Hemingway novel, pretty much sums up how we should view ourselves and others, and begs the question, should we not take care of the whole continent and each other?

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee." (Hemingway, 1940).

Derma-Sparks, L. & Edwards, J. O. (2010).  Anti-bias education for young children and    ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children

Hemingway, E. (1940). For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.