I like to think of myself as a fairly open minded, non judgemental person. But living the majority of my life in a post 9/11 world I have a confession to make; When I see a Islamic man somewhere, I react. I become conscious of where my phone, money, camera, iPod, debit card is and I make sure it is in a safe spot. If I am alone, I move to where I am near someone or to a more crowed area.
Isn't that terrible?
I feel like such an awful person for being this way. Deep down I know that the Islamic man to the right of me is just as potentially dangerous as the Caucasian man to the left, but I think this mindset came from seeing pictures of Sadam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden on TV for the majority of my life. It is so unfair of me to feel this way. I know that it was not their entire country that hijacked those plans, it was only a select few. So why do we act this way toward them?
Because it's easier.
It's easier for us as a society to group all Islamic people together instead of just singling out the ones that actually committed the crime. We have all seen the images of Islamic men on TV portraying them as evil people but now we have a society that is either fearful or hateful of an entire race. now although I may be a react a little strongly when I see someone of this race, I would never ever treat someone differently because of this, but unfortunately I know people who would and so do you.
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