Yet another post about discrimination.

I like to think that law enforcement and public officials are always fair and just in their actions.As a society, for the most part, that is striving for equality among races and genders, I hope that the people who work for our safety and well-being do so equally. While we have been talking about the portrayal of different minority groups in the media, I am not sure most people in the class can understand the feel of people accused based on race. We talked a little in class about how certain areas of the world were seeing discrimination among their police officers. People of color were pulled over most often, being suspected of drugs, while most of the time white males were the biggest in drug possession. After talking about Latin American's in the media today, I wanted to share with you a personal experience I had with police officers and discrimination. While reading the article my group led the discussion on today, I was not shocked to learn that most stories reported about Latino's were about crime or immigration. 

This is again a story from my job at Charleston's. Its pretty interesting the amount of discrimination I witness there, considering its a fairly nice restaurant in suburbia of Norman, Oklahoma. Anyways, my story. I got my car broken into one night when I was at work. I came out to find my right passenger seat window shattered and my purse taken. I know I know, you are never supposed to leave your purse in the car, but in my defense I had put it all the way under the seat. So I called the police and waited (for almost two hours I might add) for them to come and check things out. When the officer finally arrived, he did the questioning as usual so he could file a report. Besides for asking my time away from the vehicle and what was stolen, the only other question he asked me was if I was close to any of the kitchen workers. Wait, what? Not employees, not all the people that worked there, just the kitchen workers. While most of the people who work in the kitchen at Charleston's are in fact Hispanic (there are a few white men), they are all friends of mine and never once did it cross my mind. I was just as much assume some 20 year old white kid I work with broke into my car as much as a Hispanic man who works in a restaurant kitchen to feed his whole family. I know most of those guys on a friend level and none are illegal, incompetent or breaking into coworkers cars during shifts. (On a side note, a kitchen employee at the restaurant that is on the main line of food preparation makes $11 dollars an hour, not nearly close to a measly minimum wage. I make $2.15 an hour plus tips waiting tables. So those who think that kitchen workers are illegal immigrants flipping burgers for a dollar an hour need to check facts.) I found it rude and discriminatory how the officer asked only about the kitchen staff, and I let him know it as well. Apparently he had ever been called out for prejudice remarks before, because he really had nothing to say.

While the officer's ignorant questioning did not break my optimism for law enforcement all together, it did open my eyes even more to the discrimination our country still faces today. If we can't trust people employed by our government to serve and protect to also instill common decency and moral behavior, then I guess it is up to everyone else to make sure we do so double. 

If you have never seen the Free Hugs video, here ya go. Its pretty awesome. There are people in the world who fight discrimination everyday, whether its against race, gender or lifestyle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEr9D4-xJs