When You Feel Discriminated, You Are a Discriminator!

Around and Beyond CNU

When You Feel Discriminated, You Are a Discriminator!

By Omar Fakih Hamad, Guest Reporter

 Mingling is unavoidable if one wants to excel in decent academic life. Discrimination has been overestimated, but its sensitivity jeopardizes its truth. Findings convince that, around and beyond CNU, discrimination doesn’t exist. When you feel discriminated against, often you are a discriminator!

 Bo-ra, a high school sophomore, agrees that “Some make excuses of being discriminated against although they have no intention to join others. Discrimination is a paradoxical term.” She cites an example from her fifth grade where an “ordinary” girl isolated herself from ordinary students in preference to “famous” ones who didn’t accept her. “She felt discriminated against, but she was herself a discriminator.” 

Sang-n thinks that “stereotype judgments make me feel discriminated against where, basically, I may be a discriminator.” Sae-wan has mixed feelings. He says that “discrimination exists everywhere. Globally! People unconsciously discriminate and each party has to sustain unnecessary discomfort”

“Friends whom I didn’t meet recently don’t greet me. Neither do I greet them.  I feel isolated, but don’t care. I feel discriminated, but may be I am the discriminator,” says Tae-wan. 

Hye-shin thinks that the term exists because a phenomenon is attached to it. “Those who are discriminated have a clear definition of the term while it’s ambiguous to others.” She considers them as “reserved, outstanding, or inferior to interact.” Ee-na thinks that those who feel discriminated against have their own problems like social-communication-skills and desires to keep dogmatic creeds. “They must consider themselves as discriminators. Not to feel discriminated.”

Geon-tae, after observing a similar case, thinks that some who give others a hard time and cause annoyance may feel discrimination because a few of them would like to have more intimacy. 

Most university goers’ consensus is that “discriminators experience more discrimination”. Aboud, Engineering PhD student at Bangalore, has a condensed opinion. He simply says that “Yes, if you believe in self-centrism. No, if you really have an egalitarian dream.”

Ernesta, a lecturer at HUFS, views discrimination as “unfair prejudice caused by the existence of inequality, a key feature of which is inter-group relationships, which reinforce symbolic boundaries separating social groups in education, housing, jobs or wages.” She underlines that “between two groups, the disadvantaged is discriminated against. It isn’t true that when you feel discriminated you are a discriminator.”

Students and non students have pointed out some of the situations where anyone, regardless of his or her ethnic orientation, may feel a sense of being discriminated against around and beyond CNU where most may be the main discriminators in a given context. 

For situations where one may feel discriminated, around and beyond CNU, here are some tips: First, on buses, when everyone skips a seat next to yours - dress well, keep good hygiene, be gentle, and choose a seat next to the already occupied. Second, intra-discrimination and inter-discrimination - if your country man/woman or any doesn’t smile or say hello, you can start doing that. Third, hard work and helping others makes you a better and more respected person – impossible to discriminate against. Next, promises unfulfilled, dishonesty, sabotage and/or unwise usage of properties/utilities make others abandon you and makes you feel isolated. Finally, realize that for most things people are good and every one can become better at certain things.

An ultimatum remains ours. We can consider discrimination as an illusion and believe in self-centrism or take risks of finding the egalitarian dream!