Prejudice is not the Answer
Prejudice has been around as long as anyone can remember, and in one form or another it has hurt many people in the past, as well as in the present. However, although we keep seeing countless reoccurrences of it, why can’t we find a way to stop it? We need to stop it because prejudice hurts us all.
In the past, our society has seen many forms of prejudice, racial discrimination being one of them. One such topic that affected North America was the use of black people as slaves. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century and into the early stages of the twentieth century, black people were thought of as inferior to the white people. Though Canada did not participate in this belief, the United States used these beliefs to their advantage. Since there were no laws passed at the time, plantation owners used many blacks as slaves. They were forced to do hard labor in fields, and this occurred until the year 1888, when slavery was abolished. Although it was abolished, for its duration it hurt many families and killed many people. This sense of superiority that white people believed was similar to the Nazi’s beliefs that the Jewish were inferior. During World War ll (1935-1945), Adolph Hitler persecuted all Jewish people by taking them to concentration camps. At these camps they would be shot or gassed to death after doing hard work for the Germans, and as a result, literally millions of people died this way. There was truly no reason for people to loose their lives in such a manner, but it is speculated that the Nazis were jealous due to the fact many of the Jewish people in Germany were very wealthy. Though racial situations as drastic as that rarely occur in the present, other discriminatory tragedies still happen, and steps must be taken to ensure they don’t happen on a reoccurring basis.
Currently, laws are in effect to punish people who put others down due to racism. However, not only racism is discrimination. Many...