The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I can remember being little and witnessing my cousin go through a lot of prejudice. She is mixed, her father having run out when finding out her mother was pregnant, leaving her as the only person of color that was around at any family gathering. Something we often got when we were younger was that there was no way we were related because we looked too different despite her mother being my dad's sister. She was often treated differently because she was darker than the rest of the student body. There was one particular day that we'd wanted to play with some friends at school but they didn't want to play with her, only me. When I asked why, they'd said it was because she looked different.

Just because my cousin looked different didn't mean she was incapable of playing the game that the kids wanted to play or of being their friend. But because of some preconceived notion they had been taught by their parents, they were quick to assume otherwise. It diminished the equity of the situation because instead of allowing her to show that she was able to play with them, they just assumed that she wouldn't fit into the group.

I remember being upset. I denied playing with them, telling them if they didn't want to play with both of us then they couldn't play with just me. At that point in time we were best friends and did everything together. To even think about leaving her out because some kids decided they didn't want to be her friend was ridiculous.

The other kids would have had to change their way of thinking when it came to people that didn't look the same as them. It's a learned behavior, something that kids are taught by people or media in their lives, so they would have had to be brought up in a different environment or the parents would have had to have a talk with them about it (if the train of thought hadn't come from them to begin with). I think if their minds could have been changed then the situation would have played out differently and there would have been greater equity.