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Personal Essay: Prejudice Essay, Research Paper

Personal Essay: Prejudice

I. BACKGROUND

The location was a moderate to large size city near the east coast of

Massachusetts. The city has a mix of all races and is diverse in its racial

distribution. It is a city where most of the people are middle class working

folks. While it is a moderate size city, it has few city problems such as

homelessness, poverty and violence.

The year was 1992 and it was the summertime. It was very hot and humid

at about 11:30 at night and I was in a car driving around looking for something

to do. It was a boring Tuesday night so I decided to go to a big video arcade

hangout called Funworld. There is a number of video games as well as young

people. The establishment is a large building with a large parking lot.

I was with three other people in the parking lot when we were approached

by a group of three other gentlemen. I myself am a caucasian male under 21

years of age. Two of the people I was with were upperclass caucasian males also

under the age of 21. The last person was also under 21 and male, but he was

African-American. One of the caucasians was a close friend and another was an

acquaintance. The African-American was also a friend of mine. Of the three

gentlemen that approached us, two were hispanic males that appeared to be over

21 and the other was a caucasian male that appeared over 21, although I couldn’t

be sure. Although I didn’t want to make any judgements about them, they looked

as if they were poorly dressed and over 21. So I deduced that they were in a

gang or they were drug dealers, high school dropouts, etc.;.

II.ACTION

At first it appeared as if both groups would just pass by each other

unnoticed but the caucasian male in the other group made a racist remark about

my African-American friend. He said “Look at those dumb dudes walking with that

fucking spade”. My African-American Dave turned around suddenly and said “What

the fuck did you say?” The caucasian male retorted “None of your fucking

business dick!” At this point both groups approached each other and then my

friend Dave said “You wanna go”, in response the other kid said “Let’s go!” and

shoved him in the chest. The other two of the caucasian male’s friends jumped

on top of Dave and then we all kind of got into a fight. We were mostly just

pushing and shoving each other at first.

After about a minute of pushing, two of the guys jumped on Dave and one

jumped on my friend Chris. When I was looking at this I noticed that Chris, who

is well-built, and the hispanic were mostly wrestling, but Dave was really

getting hit. My first instinct was to help Dave, of course, because he was

getting killed and Chris was okay. To my surprise however, my friend Dan helped

Chris.

I immediately jumped in to help Dave even though I was equally good

friends with Chris and Dave. Dave was getting hit the hardest and needed help

bad. I pulled one of the guys off Dave and then pulled the other off. By this

time Chris and Dan had easily overpowered the hispanic kid, and when the three

kids saw it was four against three, they just ran off when they saw that there

was more of us than of them. I helped Dave off the ground, and saw that he had

a bloody nose, but he seemed okay when I asked. Chris and Dan were fine and

didn’t show any ill effects at all.

When I saw the hispanic people and the way that they were dressed I

started wondering if they were going to start any trouble. My attitude toward

was possibly prejudiced, but under the circumstances, at night with the clothing

that was being worn, I think (obviously correctly), that I was right in the

conclusion that they were out to cause trouble. I was taught no to the

prejudiced, but in this situation I’m wondering if what I did was considered

prejudiced because I was correct in my first assumption of them. The problem is

that though the actual instigator seemed to be that caucasian male from the

other group, and not the hispanics. I feel a bit puzzled as to how my thinking

and value or belief system could be construed in that situation. I believed

that they would cause problems and they did cause problems; but was it the wrong

thing to believe? I don’t know

III. REFLECTION

Looking back at the event I keep thinking about why Dan went over to

help Chris who was doing fine, instead of helping Dave who was getting killed.

Dan is not friends with either of the two but merely acquaintances with both of

them. It may not be right but I keep thinking. that there was a little racial

motivation in the fact that Dan went to help Chris and not Dave. Why else would

he have helped Chris instead of Dave. I also noticed that he wasn’t too

sympathetic to Dave’s feelings and didn’t rush over to see how he was doing, or

if he was hurt

At first these thoughts didn’t really enter my mind, but the next day

when I looked back on it and examined what had transpired, I started thinking

that perhaps there were some hidden racial overtones in how Dan acted. Although

he didn’t say anything or act offensively to Dave, perhaps not being either of

the two, I was able to notice their actions and how Dan was acting towards Dave.

I was feeling confused and hurt at the game time. I was feeling

confused because I didn’t know why one

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