by Ashley Chappell

Created on: March 01, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Facing the true bias

Yahoo put the spotlight on a picture of a tiger cub and baby orangutan who'd become inseparable buddies today and as a human being I felt strangely sick. Admittedly I can be a bit extreme when I draw parallels (I blame it on Saturday morning cartoons) but I look at this and think that not only should we be ashamed of our own childishness but that we should take a look in our mirrors and really try to figure out if the current ethnic polarization is actually based on deeply held beliefs or if that isn't just a thin veil for the same old issues of color and race.

Okay, that's enough grandstanding for now.

Now after that semi-impassioned and very idealistic speech I can come back down to reality a little. Yes, I fully realize that faith and politics will always be the most fervently argued topics and will always be something that people will fight to defend, but at this point I want to address it on the individual level. This isn't about terrorism or even racial profiling at airports, it's about the guy who gets new Muslim neighbors and wonders if they're terrorists and the woman standing in line in airport security wondering if the dark-skinned man in front of her might be wearing a bomb.

Yes, we live in a world of bigotry and racial fear and yes, it to applies to everyone on some level because we identify ourselves as a certain color or ancestry and that overrides any religious affiliation. Take the example I gave of the man who gets Muslim neighbors and give him 3 different scenarios. In the first let's assume his new neighbors are of Arab decent, in the 2nd let them be Caucasian, and in the third African American. In the first scenario the man will likely think of his neighbors every time he hears of another terrorist attack because the image has been so firmly entrenched by the media. But what of the other two? Chances are he would likely consider the white Muslim couple a little weird and just not invite them over for a BBQ, and a black Muslim couple would probably incur Malcolm X and Mohammed Ali jokes. In all three the religion is a backdrop to a prejudiced reaction, but skin color dictates the magnitude of that bigotry.

I was discussing this earlier with my boyfriend (who's opinion I greatly respect) and he made the point that talking about opinions like mine can be wasted because nothing ever changes. I've never hated having to admit someone was right so much as I did on that. For me, writing is my only weapon against what I think is wrong in the world, but if all we've been able to do since the civil rights movement began is move on to blaming religion for a prejudice that is so clearly still based on ethnicity then I know we probably never will. No matter what, I still look at this picture and think that surely if this cub and orangutan can overcome their own demi-Darwinian dogma then maybe someday we can evolve into a people who don't avoid eye contact with the person coming toward us on the sidewalk just because they look like they might be Middle Eastern.

Learn more about this author, Ashley Chappell.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.