The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice and Oppression

My parents are not religious and did not take me and my siblings to church but encouraged us to decide for ourselves what we believed in. However, I grew up in a predominately Catholic community and almost all of my friends attended church and religious events. As a child, I just thought that I was different because I did not go to these things with them and did not give it much thought. This changed when I was around 5 and one of my best friends began telling me some of the things that her and her family believed in, such as Heaven and Hell. I told her that I did not know about this and she was surprised but we kept playing. The next day when I knocked on her door, her mom answered and said that she could not play with me. She then stepped outside and told me that my family and I were going to burn in Hell unless we started attending church. I was scared and could not say anything back. She looked at me one last time and said, “My child cannot play with a sinner like you,” walked inside and closed the door. At the time, being so young, I did not really understand what she was saying or what she meant but I was terrified. I did not want my family to burn, I did not want to be a sinner, and I wanted to play with my friend. Unfortunately, this was not the last time that I had a negative experience when someone found out that I am agnostic.

The main feeling that I had when I experienced this as a child was confusion; I did not understand how someone could be so mean to me and tell me that my family would burn in Hell. As I grew older, I was sad when people would make assumptions about me when they found out that I was not religious. Most of the time it is easy to not discuss my religious beliefs and a lot of times this is not an issue for me. I respect other people’s religions; I bow my head when others pray, I smile when people say “God bless you,” but I do sometimes feel as though I am on the outside and am offended when people try to push their religions on me. When I was pregnant, a lady on the street stopped me and after talking to her for a few minutes about my pregnancy, she asked me if she could pray with me. I told her no thank you and she grabbed my hand and asked why I didn’t want to pray for my baby. I told her I am not religious and she quickly grabbed me, put her hands on my stomach and began to pray that my baby could be saved from my sins, then told me that I should change my sinful ways and save my child. While this may seem harmless, it was very offensive and demeaning to me; nobody should be told that their way of living is wrong and needs to be changed just because they are different.

Incidents such as these diminish equity because nobody deserves to be thought of as less of a person because they do not share the same views as somebody else. I have accepted the fact that I live in a society where my religious views are not the norm and that my calendar is organized around this, but I do not accept people trying to push their views on me. To me, this is demeaning because I am not less of a person than anyone else is because of my private, religious beliefs. In order for greater equity to occur, people need to be more tolerant and accepting of other’s religious views; it saddens me when I hear about people targeted for their religious beliefs and that violence that occurs over differences in religion. My experiences with people's biases and prejudices against my religious views have taught me to be more open minded about others; because of this I have friends from many different religions and love that we all have different ways of looking at life. I believe that religion is something personal and individual so we cannot make broad assumptions about people based on what they do or do not believe in-nor should we think of them as anything less if their views differ than our own. Learning about others, accepting that people all have different beliefs, values, and opinions, and not only tolerating this but respecting it as well is the only way that we can work to achieve equity. Hopefully teaching this to the children that we work with will help shape the next generation to be more accepting and respectful of everyone.