What would I fight for?

    

I was thinking of what to write for my blog this weekend and was unlucky in finding anything with substance to talk about. But something very interesting and unforgettable happened this weekend.

I was at Troy Daze with my friends, and we were waiting for the Gravitron Ride for about 30 minutes due to the long lines. We were pretty much at the front of the line when we heard someone yell out loudly, “WHAT IS HAPPENING MAN?” in an annoyed voice. It was an Indian dad with four children who placed himself at the front of the line and was ironically complaining about how everyone else was cutting. He shouted and made a big drama about we specifically were cutting in line and alerted other adults in line. Once it was our turn to go in, one of the adults shoved us aside and blocked us with his hand and made sure we couldn’t get in, which also made the staff for the ride think we were cutting too, so they stopped us from getting in. And there was nothing we could do about it.

In this situation, we were helpless because we were wrongfully framed, we wasted our time, and worst of all, they benefitted from it. Their justification for doing all this was that “we were high schoolers and that we always cut and do other dumb stuff,” even if they didn’t witness it themselves. Clearly, they didn’t see us waiting the whole time and went off the stereotype that we were high schoolers. Even though not getting on a ride isn’t the most important thing in the world, it shows how stereotypes can cause problems from the most insignificant to the most important things. A prime example of this was the murder of George Floyd, who was killed because of his race. Even though this comparison might seem like a giant stretch, if the same thing happened with a more serious accusation, we wouldn’t have just gotten shoved. It doesn’t matter if only one person is stereotypical in a crowd, because the misinformation they spread will reach non-stereotypical people as well. Stereotyping causes unfairness and injustice to plague the world, and it’s an ongoing problem that I’d fight for.

Comments

  1. Arjun ManyemSeptember 16, 2024 at 9:29 AM

    I feel like the two examples you gave definitely hold the same amount of weight in the grand scheme of the world. Great read!

    ReplyDelete

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