25 Jan 2008

This article was written for Eliza Warren's WRTG 391 DE class.

I was born and raised in Europe. I have learned from my history books that there were freedom and equality in the United States. I learned that, among many other rights, people enjoy freedom of religion and freedom of speech - the rights that were envied by millions of people of the Eastern Block countries.

When I came to the United States, I truly believed in the truthfulness of these terms. To my complete satisfaction, my experience taught me the existence of these facts. However, I became disappointed in my surroundings, when I was forced to recognize that a portion of people were not free of prejudice. "Prejudice," Gordon Allport writes, "is thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant" (Allport, qtd. in Rottenberg and Winchell 81). This short definition helped me to discover that, regardless of race, color, national origin, or gender, people share a universally existing problem: prejudice.

Despite of my experience regarding prejudice, many people believe that prejudice does not exist, and one should not interpret the opinion of others as prejudice. These people reason that it is their right to express their opinions. However, I do not agree with this judgment. Let me bring Gordon Allport's essay of "The Nature of Prejudice," and his observation of the types of prejudice to my defense. According to Allport, who summarized the different types of prejudices and defined prejudice in his essay, some people feel dislike against minorities, but they are not able to explain their reasoning, however. Allport found that this dislike is a mannerism taught by society and surfaces in their "treatment to Negroes" (Allport, qtd. in Rottenberg and Winchell 80). Others, who live "in various parts of the world," feel hatred against Americans by expressing their resentment when they "hold their noses till the American goes by" (Allport, qtd. in Rottenberg and Winchell 80). Yet again, others dislike people of certain religions, such as Jews. Gordon Allport found an anti-Semitist group, who compared Jewish people to "lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious robbers" (Allport, qtd. in Rottenberg and Winchell 81).

Prejudice is a universally existing problem because prejudice happens everywhere in the world; for example, it happened in Hungary. After the fall of the Communism, the Soviet troops finally left Hungary. I was absolutely happy about the lack of the presence of the Soviet troops. The controversy arose when the war, in the Balkans, broke out. Specifically, the incoming Americans made me feel threatened with their presence. I wondered whether or not the company of the American troops would enhance or destroy the freedom of Hungary. The Soviet occupation lived sharply in my memories, although Communism was over a long time ago. I felt that the occupation of one regime was over to be replaced by another regime. At first, I watched the American troops, who were marching into our towns, with much doubt concerning the future possibility of communication. To my greatest happiness, the American troops were nothing like the Soviet troops used to be. The Americans were extremely polite and helpful. Now, I am also an American Soldier, and my participation in the activities of the United States Army taught me many lessons. One of these lessons was that prejudice is an unfair treatment of others without knowing all of the facts concerning those individuals.

My experience allows me to support the fact that prejudice is an existing problem in America. When I came to the United States, a local employer hired me as a waitress. I was happy with my first job in America, but I did not realize how difficult it was going to be to prove that I was a competent contributor to this profession. In this particular case, my manager and my coworkers believed that I came from Germany, but they were not sure so they curiously tried to find out my real heritage. After learning that I came from Hungary, I felt disappointment and resentment from their behavior. It made me feel let down, but I learned to deal with it. I realized that people around me are inherently good, but they did not take their time to broaden their knowledge with more diverse information. This incapability of change made it difficult for me to surface the best of my potential.

In addition to my unhelpful experience at my first job as a newcomer, my accent posed another difficulty in my life, which led me to discover another proof of prejudice. Many times, I was not able to pronounce words correctly. Despite of the fact that I spoke the language fluently, my manager and my coworkers drew the conclusion that I did not know or understand what was happening around me. They did not try to see the bigger picture, and I did not receive as interesting and challenging duties as other people received. Luckily, negative experiences like this decreased over the years, but I still receive unfair treatment at times. Besides some occasional unfairness, the majority of people find my heritage rather interesting than controversial.

My experience is only one example of the thousands of incidents against people. No matter where I look, I see unfair treatment all over the world. Regardless of the continent or culture, nobody is exempt from biases. But I cannot blame people carrying this disease because any average community has to rely on a limited amount of knowledge. However, and my experience is the best example, it takes time, effort, and courage to reveal causes and reasoning to draw up a conclusion so that the public would have a full understanding of the historical background of any newcomer.

Works Cited

Rottenberg, Annette T., and Donna Haisty Winchell. Elements of Argument. 8th. Boston: Bedford/St Martin's, 2006.