Personal Experience: Discrimination In The Workplace

Throughout this semester, there have been many topics discussed. Most of these topics were surprising and for the most part eye openers for many people in this class, like me. We discussed immigration, discrimination in the workplace, discrimination based on weight, race, gender, sexual orientation, tattoos, piercings, the LGBTQ community, sexual harassment, and racism. While having these discussions in class, I learned that in order to live amongst each other we have to be aware that everyone is different. We have to accept eachothers differences and learn from them. Becoming aware is the most important step. The more educated we are about someone or a group of people who are different than us, the less likely we are to be so ignorant. I learned …show more content…
My grandfather is 100% African American and my grandmother is 100% Norwegian and Irish. Something that has caused me to be discriminated against over the years is disclosing to people that I am african american. The first thing that people tend to say is “no youre not”, because I do not look as if I were african american. Throughout elementary school and middle school kids would say that I was bleached and ask me if my parents did this to me when I was born because they were ashamed that I was indeed, african american. Dealing with this over the years has only made me embrace this and be proud of where I come from. My grandparents struggled to keep their relationship alive because back then in the 60’s and 70’s, there were a lot of people discriminating against a colored man being with a white woman along with segregation being a huge problem. I am where I am today because of what my grandparents overcame and that is not something that people should look down upon one another for. For a long time I was afraid to tell people that I was african american because I wanted to avoid the comments and the looks but as I got older I realized that everyone has something about them that makes them different. If my nationalities and my heritage, something that I can not change, is a reason you want to discriminate against me then that says more about you as a person than …show more content…
People would call me a liar and say hurtful and rude things to try and bring me down. The most uncomfortable situation that I was ever put into regarding discrimination was back in the sixth grade. I remember my best friend (who is also african american) and I, has lockers right next to each other. One day we had come into school and someone had broken into my friends locker and taken a sharpie out of it. They then proceeded to take the sharpie and write KKK in huge letters all the way down my locker. At the time, we had just started learning about the KKK in social studies class and it was still something genuinely new to us since we were still so young. One of the security guards had seen it before us and has brought us down to the office. This was considered at the time a hate crime. We had to fill out paperwork explaining what we saw and how we felt. They never found out who it was that did it and following that one experience, it was never done again. Because of this, there were many anti-bullying assemblies and announcements during school. To this day I still remember what my principle at the time had told me. He said, “you will either be someone who finds a reason to put another person else down and discriminate against them or someone who sees the beauty in others difference, you just have to decide the kind of person you want to be seen as.” This was an eye opener to me at such a young