The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I have a personal memory of an incident of oppression that occurred during my high school years.  Our high school band was traveling to an event together in vans.  I expect the transit was approximately two hours.  To entertain ourselves, we played games together.  I recall my friend, purposefully not allowing one not so popular girl to participate.  My friend had mean comments for this girl and made her feel uncomfortable with every word, look and gesture she made.

This particular oppression diminished equity by my friend acting as if she was much better than this unpopular girl.  My friend placed herself much higher than this girl and made this girl feel very low and not valued at all.

I remember feeling absolutely awful!  How could my friend do this to another person?  I remember turning away from the group in shame because of my friend’s attitude and behavior.  I felt trapped being in a traveling vehicle unable to get away from the situation.

My friend would have needed to change her attitude toward this girl in order for equity to begin happening.  My friend should have been kind, inviting, including and thought of this girl as an equal to herself.  We were all band members traveling to the same place to perform as a team.

Had I been more confident, I should have been bold enough to tactfully change the direction of my friend’s motives by saying kind, inviting and encouraging words to the girl while not putting my friend down.  I could have earned a new friend instead of letting my friend hurt this girl.  We both could have earned a new friend. 

I can see how ridiculous our reasons for bias, prejudice and oppression are when I think of the above incident.  We are all people with values, characteristics and talents that can be shared and from which we can learn from and become better and richer people.