The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

Being a Muslim woman living in the United States is a challenging experience due to my obvious dress code which has always provoked people’s curiously to either question the way I dress or reject my existence in the first place. Yet the September 11 attacks brought about a whole new challenge to Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular. The ignorance was replaced with a media campaign that targeted the heart of my religion and created what is now known as “Islamophobia”.  One of my favorite shows on television is “what would you do?” an ABC show that recreates an ethical dilemma from the daily experiences of people and puts ordinary people on the spot to see their responses and what would they do. One of the episodes dealt with the racial discrimination Muslim women deal with on a daily basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfHL4AZtS58&feature=related

Although I have not experienced the exact incident, the racial remarks are all too familiar and have been experienced by others around me.

Such prejudice strips the person from their basic rights as Americans and the chance to be seen for who they truly are not who the media or others are defining them as. It eliminates part of their identity as American born and raised in the United States.

No matter how much we know that Evil exists, our pure nature always wants to ignore its existence and assume the good in people. Prejudice, bias, “-isms” and oppression all exist, yet no one can get used to hearing them or watching them happen without feeling shocked. When I first watched the show with my children, our jaws dropped and we were in complete shock, as the second part of the show started rolling and we saw the good in people start to come out, we all breathed a sigh of relief that at the end the good will prevail. My daughter was distressed and was able to relate to the girl in the episode because of the way she dresses as well as the fact that she was indeed born in Texas and never lived anywhere else but the United States. it was hard for me as a mother to teach her that unfortunately this ugly side of society does exist, but it should never weaken her faith in people or God. 

To turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity, the change must come from within us. We must first want to rid ourselves of bias and prejudice to make the change. Then we must be open to knowledge and learning about others. Ignorance is what creates fear and the more ignorant we remain the more fears and enemies we accumulate. Furthermore, we must seek knowledge from reliable sources, relying on the media to shape our beliefs and views is a poison that we can choose to stop. Equity comes when we see each other for who they are not who we perceive them to be.