Essay, Research Paper: Prejudice

In today’s world, there are many social issues, like poverty, vandalism and unemployment. However, prejudice has become the most dramatic one. Prejudging people for their appearance is a common practice that human perform. People are not only ridiculed for their color, but also by their religion, sex or age. Therefore, I consider that racism, ageism and sexism are the three major problems in our society and we need to cease them immediately.
Much of our world’s history were based upon racism. In the 1600’s, white men used Africans as slaves and treated them as they were not human. "Colored" people were not even allowed to use the same drinking fountains as white people. Fortunately, in the last three decades, race prejudice has taken a positive turn. Many rights programs were created to protect the African Americans. Now, the black community is not only being increasingly respect by Caucasians, but they are also being idolized by millions of people all over the world. The most popular watched sport in America, NBA basketball, is played by over 87% of the African decent. Nevertheless, racism is still a issue that will never completely go away.
Ageism is also a worrying problem in our society. Though many people think that this is not a serious problem, people are being harassed about their age everyday, whether they are "too young" or "too old". I have dealt with this problem myself, as many other teenagers have. When I walk into some stores, I am asked to leave my purse at the counter and I am often followed around by employees. They watch every move I make to make sure that I will not steal anything. I know that theft is a dilemma that many businesses have to deal with , but when it gets to the point of being untrusted due to your age, it is completely ridiculous and inappropriate.
Men and women have never been equal in the world and that is what we call sexism. For example, if a man and a woman who have the same knowledge ask for the same job, the boss will probably pick the man. Even though they both get the job, the man will maybe have a better salary than the woman. People always believe that men work better than women but no one can give a satisfying explication to support that thought. Fortunately, sexism is decreasing constantly but it will never diminish to the point of complete equality.
We can never judge someone by their physical attributes, but looking inside that person to see who he really is. I think the solution to reduce racism, sexism and ageism is very simple: respect and treat each other and as we would like to be treated. Also, we need to teach children to accept all people, no matter how do they look like. If we educate them and change our attitudes toward people, sometime in the future we will be closer to accept that someone’s character is always based upon the content of his soul, not his religion, gender, age, or the color of his skin.


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