Embracing our differences

Embracing our differences

I’ve never really encounter nor knew such thing as prejudice existed prior to residing in the United States of America, prior to then I was in Haiti, in Haiti I guess you can say there maybe prejudice but it was not as upfront as it is in America, Haiti is a class society much like the old days of Rome and Greece, where whatever occupation your family were into will also be your profession no matter what, there was no choice, if your father was a shoe shine person, a farmer or even a yardman that is eventually what you will take over doing, majority of the time for the same family he worked for, to me it was a form of slavery.

I grew up in Haiti with maids to do the cooking and cleaning of the house and yardman to take care of the gardening and tend to the animals and farm, I could be wrong in this but I don’t think they were paid for their services, I believe the payment was room and board and food. These people were looked upon as less than human, we were not permitted to speak to them or really interact with them beyond telling them to do something for us, they were not educated and only knew their jobs, I often felt sorry for them, because a lot of them are kind people, they just needed to feed their loved ones, so they take on whatever jobs were available and the humiliation that came with it, that’s just the way it is and they only knew one way of surviving.

The type of prejudice that exist in America is one of the most violent I’ve ever seen in my life, this type is because a person is another color, something that an individual is unable to neither control nor change. There have been so many people killed in the U.S because of racism and anti Semitism that the government had to step in and create the hate crime law, which makes any person killed by another because of their race, religion and sexual preference will be prosecuted and receive full term sentences, these sentences can range from life to the death penalty. Even with these harsh sentences and laws clearly in place, people are still not deterred from committing crimes against a person because of their race, religion and sexual preferences. I believe the one thing we can do is to try to talk it out versus slugging it out.