Racial inequality has been part of the world for thousands of years. It has affected millions of people worldwide just because of their race. There have been many protests in response to people being oppressed due to their skin color, something they can’t control. People have been violated, bullied, hurt, and experienced much more just because of a factor in their life that they have no control over.
Black Lives Matter has been a movement since 2013 and was created as a response to African Americans being oppressed. According to Pew Research Center, half or more of the people say that being black or Hispanic puts people at a disadvantage in our society which is NOT acceptable. Recent incidents, such as the tragic murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, have opened the public eye. With the efforts of other researchers, reporters, protesters, these reports of racial inequalities in police violence are now being used to motivate the need for major, systemic improvements in how we police communities.
With Covid-19, the amount of racism towards Asians has spiked worldwide. This racism was especially prevalent in America towards Asian-Americans. According to Forbes, “1 in 4 Americans have seen Asian Americans blamed for the coronavirus pandemic in recent weeks.” This poll was taken promptly after eight people, including six Asian women who were killed in Atlanta. Our Asian American community is being harassed just because people think Coronavirus is their fault. Another statistic according to USA TODAY is that 43% of Americans say a specific organization or group of people is to blame for COVID-19 which is not true. It’s easier to assign blame to a single group of people who are considered to be outside of your culture during periods of great confusion and fear. This is referred to as scapegoating, and it has been a political technique for hundreds of years. Giving a target to a troubled community has always resulted in the dehumanization of the targeted group and a diversion of attention away from policy decisions.
Racial inequality has been a major issue in society and it needs to change. People need to stop using groups of people as scapegoats for the problems happening around them and confront any prejudice they may have towards people from a different background than them. A shift from this racist, backwards mentality is long overdue, and this shift begins with us, the youth!
According to the statistics of Southern Poverty Center, there are 953 hate groups that are currently operating in the United States. While their targets differ, they have one main motivation which is to attack, either physically or verbally, a certain class of people who are members of one specific designated sector of society such as ethnicity or a belief system. The number of hate groups rose to 953 from 917 in the past 2 years. This immediate rise of hate does not only minimize the peaceful environment, but it also leads to a civilization where different is alienated and only one type of people are properly acknowledged by the rest. Eliminating the destructive power of hate is not easy when hating something is so popular; however, if this work is recognized by everyone as a responsibility, especially by the backbone of society which is youth, achieving a hate-free environment is not impossible. To create a tolerant, diverse, and peaceful society in the future, today’s young people need to acknowledge their own power of impact and start taking action now.
The first step of solving a problem is acknowledging it and genuinely wanting to find a solution. If a problem is ignored by someone, it is either not recognized or its solution might not seem possible. While people’s absolute impact power is limited based on certain things such as their information on topic, experience, and position; age does not have to be one of them. Samantha Smit was only 10 when she eased Cold War tensions between the United States and Russia with a single letter. She wrote a letter to CPSU General Secretary Yuri Andropov suggesting that both countries could co-exist peacefully, which ended up getting published in a Soviet newspaper. But if one girl can achieve something that thousands of politicians all around the world couldn’t achieve, why youth is still not actively involved in crisis solving processes? The answer is simple: because they do not believe they can make a change. What if Samantha’s
parents told her sending a letter to offer a solution about one of the most serious crises at that time was funny and only a waste of time? At this point, it’s the responsibility of society to support these young people who are full of potential by giving them an opportunity. If young people guard themselves with knowledge, patience, kindness and the inner drive that makes them always strive for more, their voices certainly will be heard.
Last year, at the very beginning of 10th grade, we came up together as 6 friends who had one thing in common. We were all terrified to see how surely hate was spreading all around the world and especially in our home. Knowing that we, the future building stones of society, had to do take an immediate action, we created our own non-profit organization called DoNotHate which is entirely student-run. Over the past year, we reached out to leaders of different communities, churches, reform temples and many more. However, as young people who have realized their power of impact, we also knew there were so many of us out there who were not awaken yet. As Nelson Mandela says, “Young people are capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and raising the banners of freedom.” Creating something that can have an enormous impact on society was only the sketch without getting other young people involved. Thus, we created the DoNotBully project that aims to bring awareness to schools and provide a bully-free environment where students can focus on getting an education and developing themselves, far from the dreadful results of bullying. Being fully student-run, DoNotBully gives students a platform to take responsibility to improve their own environment. On our website, we organized a writers’ corner in which young people share their opinions on hate-related topics and propose solutions. We are in contact with many people whose beliefs are as different as fire and water; yet, all of them have never hesitated to support us from the bottom of their heart by doing everything they can so our message gets heard by everyone. It’s only the beginning; yet, we have a long road ahead to accomplish a society where every person views and treats each other with dignity and comes together to promote shared values of their communities and the world as a whole.
Youth is more than capable to make a difference in this world; yet, while it’s on young people to realize their capacity, it’s society’s responsibility to support them until the end. Young people need to be listened, encouraged and assisted wisely when necessary. Every great change starts from one place with one idea; yet, with determination, patience, and dignity it creates an enormous impact. Martin Luther King Jr. says “People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” While the communication and tolerance level is so much higher among the youth, it is very unnecessary to wait for the leadership of an older generation to decide for us. It is our chance to prove we are capable and it is society’s chance to prove we have their support until the end.
The term ‘Hate Bias Incident’ relates to behavior or language which displays an act of bias against people based on their identification qualities such as race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and many more. Regardless of what category it belongs to, a hate bias incident is an act which violates the code of student conduct. Hate bias related incidents lead to a more serious set of consequences.
It happens daily. The use of negative words and actions to hurt the undeserving. Why are they undeserving? No one deserves the damage hate can do.
I’ve seen it on social media, underneath photos of people with “controversial” viewpoints. I’ve seen it in the way people throw around the “R” word like it is a synonym for stupid when it has the potential to crush people who at one point in our history were deemed “unworthy of life.” I’ve seen it on the news, since there’s plenty of it to report, but perhaps worst of all, I’ve seen it in our country’s past.
More teenagers than ever suffer from anxiety.
It’s a topic no one wants to talk about. You can’t just say “I suffer from depression” at a dinner conversation without making everyone feel uncomfortable.
Why?
Mental health has become stigmatized in our society. And the way it’s been twisted into everyday language isn’t helping.
A Hate bias incident is a speech, expression or conduct motivated, completely or partially by prejudice or bias. It is not the same as Hate crime, as there will be no criminal activity involved in Hate Bias incidents. As the hate crime incidents, if prosecuted, are dealt with in the Judicial system, schools and educational institutions must hold the responsibility in handling the hate bias incidents through several educational programs and grievance procedures. Here’s a look at the top 10 tips that can assist in identifying the Hate Bias incidents:
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
Just like a wind up car, if you put people on a path from childhood, they will never truly stray from that path even as they get older. So this tells us that people are shaped during their childhood. What do we do in the modern-day to “shape” or “start off” our children? We send them to school, we take them to church on Sundays, the mosque on Fridays, synagogues on Shabbat, or any extracurricular activities that can feed our children or shape them positively. But there is one thing that we are not giving our children enough of, and that is love (The ability to love, appreciate, tolerate, and respect others).
Hatred against something comes when a person feels that something blocked their will. The person desired to do something or for things to be a certain way, and this person, place or thing, blocked that from happening or being the way the person wanted it to be. So hatred is expressed as a way to eliminate, that which is preventing getting one’s own way, it’s totally DEFENSIVE.
The Equal Protection Clause is a part of the Fourteenth Amendment in the United states constitution, which took its effect in the late 1860’s. The point of this Clause was to guarantee equal rights and equal protection to all citizens. There are various opinions on the matter, whether it is right or wrong, useful or useless, etc. Everybody has different ideas but my opinion is that it is totally useless.
Have you ever seen someone do something and thought to yourself: “why would he even do that?” or, “what mentality must one have to do something like that?” Well, I don’t know about you, but I sure have. Whenever someone does deliberately makes a choice to do an act, I always think about what motive or what justification he/she had to do that. Most of the time it may be easy to understand why?, but in certain cases I am left baffled. I can’t comprehend the reasoning behind what motive they would have; one of these things is hate, specifically racism.